


it leads to each other (we become ourselves)

by Anonymous



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: /be yourself, Everybody Lives, Getting A Divorce, I dont know how NY works I live in missouri, Learning How To Love Yourself, M/M, Mutual Pining, STL?, Sharing a Bed, guess everyone was too good to live in like, possibly more romantic:, sharing a car
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:33:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 26,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25770649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “Richie Tozier’s got a girl?” Mike said with a baritone laugh and little regard for the sudden wrongness that Eddie was feeling. “What is this, man, 1950?”Or: After Derry, Eddie comes to terms with himself and the fact that the lowercase L loser he’s just remembered he’s in love with has a girlfriend.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 12
Kudos: 65
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm aware of how embarrassing this is I just thought it would be fun to give Richie a beard also the entire conception of this can be blamed on the afternoon in like, January, where I accidentally listened to Ms. California 800 times in a row and rewired my brain
> 
> The title is from a Patti Smith quote from Just Kids, and yes, reading that first is crucial to your understanding of this work.

It was weird to feel whole again.

Eddie looked around the table at Derry’s one and only Chinese restaurant and into the faces of his newly remembered friends, and felt something edging towards contentment, maybe for the first time in his adult life.

It was funny, the little ways they had all seemed to change, but still manage to stick to the blueprint. Ben may have lost a few pounds, but the shy smile on his face when Beverly grabbed his shoulder was exactly the same. Bill’s hairline had receded quite a bit since childhood, but the way all of their eyes stuck to him whenever he spoke hadn’t changed much. Stan, funnily enough, appeared much the same, but then he had already seemed more adult than any of the rest of them when they were still thirteen. The only change was a ring on his left hand and a softer smile as he watched the rest of them talk.

“Hey, hey, Stanley! You got married?” Beverly said, obviously having noticed the same gold flash on his hand that Eddie had. When Eddie looked at her, he could still see the ghost of the girl he had spent that summer with, funny and sharp, in this beautiful woman. “Tell us about her!”

Stan sighed, clearly trying to tamp down on a smile and failing. “Oh, Patty?”

“Yes, _Patty_ ,” Beverly said, grinning.

“We met in college,” Stan said, his face soft, “and we got married a year later. It just seemed—well, you guys probably know this feeling better than most, but it felt _right_ , you know?”

Eddie thought he understood. It was a sense he remembered from youth, of doing things because they seemed, inexplicably, like the correct course of action, despite having no reason to back it up. It was a similar feeling to how they all fit together, each contributing something to the sense of rightness that no one else could. A feeling of rightness that Eddie now realized he had spent his entire adult life trying to find again.

“After a _year_? Stan, you hound _dog_!” Richie crowed from across the table.

Richie. When Eddie looked at him, he felt more of that strange sameness. He’d gotten taller, the asshole, but this Richie had the same bravado and trash mouth and stupid fucking glasses as the one Eddie’d known at 13, and it made Eddie feel the same weird itch he had as a teenager. The one that made him want to climb into a hammock, kick his glasses off, and demand Richie look at him.

Stan, however, just held up a lazy middle finger in Richie’s direction. “Alright, Trashmouth, you got me, I love my wife. You?”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, Richie,” Beverly said, drawing out the words with a smirk. “Is there a Mrs. Tozier back in California?”

“Oh! Yeah, yeah, I got married,” Richie said with a cool unaffectedness. Eddie’s stomach flipped, partially out of disbelief and partially because he got the feeling he was next in line. The idea of talking about his own marriage was about as appetizing as the half-cold Chinese on the table.

“What? I don’t fucking believe it,” Eddie said, squinting. “ _You_ got married?”

“Yeah, didn’t you hear, Eds?” Richie’s face was open in a way it never was, seeming to say _who, me?_

“No!” Eddie said over both the chorus of no’s from the table at large and the feeling of his fingers going numb. Richie, married? To a _wife_? Even if it had been almost 30 years, that was something Eddie knew he would never be able to picture.

“Yeah, man!” Richie said, face splitting into a huge grin. “Me and your mom are _very_ happy—” 

“Fuck you, man!” Eddie said, making sure his voice didn’t hold any of the relief he felt sweep in his stomach. Not that he didn’t think Richie should be married, or something, but such a departure from the expected rhythms of their youth would have shown the way time had passed in a way Eddie was very not comfortable with.

“Fuck you!” Richie fired back joyfully, taking a swig of his drink. When the glass came back down, however, he looked more serious, an expression that was jarring to see on Richie’s face. “No, but really, I uh, back home, I’ve got a girl.”

“Richie Tozier’s got a _girl_?” Mike said with a baritone laugh and little regard for the sudden wrongness that Eddie was feeling. “What is this, man, 1950?”

“Hey, fuck you!” Richie said, and then affected a transatlantic accent that had much improved since he was thirteen. “I’ll have you know that my girl and I have been just the picture of happiness ever since the war ended.”

“No shit, Richie! How long have you two been together?” Bill said, laughing.

“Oh, seven years? We’re not fuckin’ college sweethearts like Stan the Man over here,” Richie said, jabbing his thumb at Stan, “but we get along pretty well. Her name’s, uh, Sandy.”

Seven years. That wasn’t quite as long as Eddie and his wife had been together, but it wasn’t so far off. He and Myra had certainly been married by the time they’d known each other seven years. 

As if reading Eddie’s mind, Ben spoke up. “No marriage talk yet though, Richie?”

“C’mon guys, do I really look like the white wedding type?”

Eddie glanced quickly around the table, but it seemed that all of the rest of his friends were buying into Richie’s story, no confusion on anyone’s faces. Maybe, Eddie reasoned, the reason Richie in a relationship seemed so strange was that his last reference for Richie was some scrawny 13-year-old kid who used the word wang. Maybe—probably—there were new parts of Richie, parts Eddie wouldn’t recognize. The whole idea left a bad taste in his mouth.

When his eyes finally swung to Stan, Eddie was startled to see some of his own disbelief echoed in his friend’s face. Stan was looking at Richie with his eyes slightly pinched and his mouth screwed to one side. When he looked up to see Eddie watching him, his face smoothed back out and he shook his head slightly. Huh. 

Eddie was about to open his mouth to say something about Stan’s face or Richie’s girlfriend or maybe even his own marriage when the waitress arrived with fortune cookies. 

***

They were back in the fucking sewers, because of course they were. Eddie had spent his entire life meticulously calculating how to best avoid anything that could even slightly make him sick only to come back down here, the Derry sewer system. Maybe, in some weird way, this was where Eddie belonged. He shook his head. Fuck, he had to get out of this town.

He scrabbled for his inhaler, feeling even more pathetic with the knowledge that his lungs were perfectly fine.

“Hey, hey!” Richie said from right next to him, grabbing at it as soon as Eddie took it out of his pocket. “Cmon man, you don’t need that shit.”

“Fuck you, Richie,” Eddie said, fighting him to get the inhaler in his mouth. “I fucking do!”

“No, _shit_ , you don’t have fucking asthma man, don’t be a pussy—”

“Richie!” Eddie said, too loudly. He sighed, shoulders slumping. “I do need it, I’ve always needed it, even when I’ve known this was all,” Eddie gestured to himself, his lungs, his head, “…bullshit. I’m not brave like the rest of you, I’m too scared to keep doing shit like this.” 

“Hey, c’mon,” Richie said, eyes surprisingly gentle. “Eddie, you _are_ brave, braver than you think.” Richie’s hand rested on his shoulder and Eddie tried not to lean too much into its warmth down in the cold, damp sewer. “Besides, I can’t speak for everyone, but I am absolutely _shitting_ myself, man.”

Eddie smiled weakly. Richie grinned back and reached up to pat Eddie’s face. 

“Ow, dude, watch the fucking cheek wound!”

***

Richie was caught in the deadlights. _Richie was caught in the deadlights._

Maybe it was the passage of time, maybe it was the fucking clown cavern, but Eddie hadn’t remembered finding Bev caught floating feet above the ground as stomach dropping, ball shriveling fucking _terrifying._

For a second, Eddie found himself frozen in fear. Again. Like the kitchen upstairs, like watching Bev get pulled down into the greywater. It gripped his stomach and muscles, hardening them into something useless. He couldn’t move, staring at Richie’s rising silhouette, limp in the light. There was nothing Eddie could do, he was just some risk analyst from nowhere Maine who even now reached for an inhaler he knew wouldn’t help, he had no fucking _weapons_ —Eddie’s hand brushed up against the fence post in his belt loop. Oh, yeah.

“It kills monsters,” he breathed, recalling what Beverly had said, “if you believe it does, if you…I fucking believe it does! Hey, hey! _Beep beep, motherfucker_!”

The post flew from his hand, far straighter and faster than it had any right to and landed solidly embedded in the clown’s maw. Eddie watched in shock as Pennywise shrunk down between the jagged rocks, looking all for the world like a deflating balloon. 

More importantly than that, however, was the fact that Richie had just dropped the 10 feet he’d been suspended and landed in a way that looked like maybe both his knees were broken. _Shit._

“Hey, hey, Rich,” Eddie said, scrambling over to him. He crouched over Richie’s prone form and saw that while his eyes were open, they were blank and staring like Beverly’s had been almost 30 years ago. Fuck. What had they done to snap her out of it? Someone had slapped her, right? Or, no, wait, Ben had _kissed_ her, which Eddie remembered still in his thirteen-year-old lens of … _weird, dude._ But, staring at Richie’s slack face, Eddie thought maybe he got it now. He was gripped with the need to do _something_.

Just as he was leaning towards Richie to slap him, kiss him, who knew, Richie came awake with a shuddering gasp.

“Richie!” Eddie said, sounding relieved even to himself at seeing Richie’s eyes darting around. “Hey, welcome back—I think I got it, man!”

“Eddie? Hey, Eds!” Richie said, a little out of it. Eddie laughed and realized his hand was still resting on Richie’s stubbled cheek. And, that he didn’t exactly want to remove it. And maybe, even with Richie blinking awake and moving, Eddie was still thinking about kissing him.

Oh. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Before Eddie could do or say anything about this revelation, however, Richie was moving very quickly to flip both himself and Eddie over and away from where he had fallen prone.

“Hey, what the _fuck,_ Richie,” Eddie said to cover up the flush he felt creeping up his neck at the feeling of being suddenly pinned under Richie’s body. Before he could say anything else, though, one of Pennywise’s fuck off spider claws pierced into the rock directly above where they had just been lying.

“Oh, shit!” Eddie said, scrambling to his feet. “That’s not fucking fair, I killed that bitch!”

“Eddie, Eddie,” Eddie glanced over to see Richie next to him, looking a bit frantic around the eyes. “You alright, man? You’re ok?”

“Yeah, are _you_? You fell like, two stories, dude.”

“Yeah, yeah, no, I’m fine, I’m aces. Eds,” Richie said, his eyes still darting around Eddie’s face. Which didn’t exactly make his newfound urge to kiss him _go away_. Fuck.

“Come on,” Eddie said, wrenching his eyes away from Richie’s, “let’s get to the others. I have an idea.”

It wasn’t hard to convince everyone else to go along with his, admittedly, pretty vague plan. It seemed, and here it was again, _right_ to force Pennywise to adopt the physical limitations of whatever form he was taking. Evening the playing field for once.

“There’s more than one way to make someone small,” Mike had said, which seemed a bit—1st grade teacher to Eddie, but, sure. He got the point when Mike had stepped forward and started yelling insults at Pennywise. Which, again, was right, if a little stupid.

“Mimic!” 

“Leper!” 

“You’re just a fucking old woman!” Bev’s voice rang out.

United, their seven voices: “You’re a clown! Clown! Clown!”

Pennywise shrunk back, at first just reacting to their words, and then physically shrinking into itself, getting smaller and smaller. 

As they surrounded it in the center of the cistern, Eddie felt himself marvel at the fact that he had ever been so afraid of the creature before him, now so small and pathetic.

Reaching forward, the lucky seven brought out Pennywise’s still-beating heart, beginning to squeeze it under their combined fingers.

“Look at you,” Pennywise’s weak voice floated up, “all…grown up…”

“Yeah,” Stan said, voice flat but strong, “and we don’t _fucking_ believe in you anymore.”

With that, Eddie tightened his hand around the heart and felt the others do the same, crushing it beneath their fingers. Eddie looked up into the eyes of his friends—the best friends he had ever had—and realized with a start that as good as he felt right now, he didn’t want this to be the best moment of his life. And, he realized, looking at Beverly, Bill, Mike, Ben, Stan, _Richie_ , that it didn’t have to be.

***

“No. _No_. Absolutely not.”

“Eds, come on.”

“No! We’re not—fucking—thirteen anymore! I have an open face wound! I’m going to get _gangrene_ —”

A splash sounded from below. Eddie looked over to see that Bev had leapt off the edge of the rock down, down into the green water of the quarry. He groaned.

“Oh, great.” Another splash as Ben, as always, followed close behind her.

Richie grinned. “What, we survived the original killer clown from outer space to die in some dirty water?” Two successive splashes as Mike and Bill let gravity carry them down into the water. “I think you’re outnumbered, Eds.”

With that, Richie, took a running leap and catapulted down into the water, hooting. The splash sounded somehow larger than everyone else’s, similar to the way that Richie filled up a room more than anyone Eddie had ever met before or since. He felt himself smile softly.

“Hey,” Stan said from behind him. “You wanna just…leave?” He gestured over his shoulder with a thumb. Eddie snorted and Stan’s face broke out into a grin.

“Nah, man, we should probably get down there and make sure none of them, like, die.”

A shadow seemed to briefly pass over Stan’s face. “It looked kind of close down there for a second, didn’t it?”

“Yeah.” They both were quiet for a moment, listening to the shouts of their friends from the water down below. 

“Are you also getting the feeling that, I don’t know, we _shouldn’t_ have all made it out?” Stan said, eyes focused somewhere in the distance.

“Yeah man, what are the odds?” Eddie said, maybe trying to make a joke, but he felt, somehow, that Stan wasn’t just talking about the unlikeliness. Coming out of the sewer and into the light of day, it hadn’t felt quite real. Like Eddie was seeing something he maybe shouldn’t.

“Did I tell you how, back in Georgia, when Mike called, I,” Stan said, and then stopped. His eyes finally darted back to meet Eddie’s and they were full of something that Eddie had seen only rarely when they were children. It scared him a little still.

“Stanley,” he said slowly, “what happened?”

Stan shook his head. “I thought about, I almost.” He heaved a great shuddering sigh. “I was going to take myself off of the board.”

Eddie blinked for a second, not quite understanding, and then—oh. “Oh. Oh, _Stan_.”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck, man. Are you…okay?”

Stan laughed ruefully. “After that shitshow, are any of us? But, yeah, I don’t think I want to—I’m not going to do that again.”

Eddie stood there, not quite knowing what to say. He knew, logically, that he had only known this version of Stan for about 48 hours, maybe less, but Eddie had been missing him without knowing it for almost his entire life. “You know that we would all—I don’t know what we would have done without you, man. I’m glad you came back.”

Stan smiled for the first time since the beginning of the conversation. It made him look much younger than his 40 years. “Yeah, me too. Now, about this cliff.”

Eddie felt himself smile too. “Let’s just…get it over with.”

The jump seemed to take longer than it had in childhood, and Eddie strangely got the same feeling he did when they were scrambling out of the collapsing cistern under Neilbolt, like instead of careening down to the water below, his body was rising, up, up. Out of the sewers, out of Derry, into something new.

When Eddie finally hit the ice-cold water below, it felt like waking up.

***

“Man, I don’t know about the rest of you, but going back to normal life after this is going to be a hell of a thing,” Mike said, shaking his head and lifting his shirt from his stomach to wring it out a little and Eddie thought briefly about how it was a little unfair that all of his friends had grown up so fucking _hot_. “Not that my life, you know, ever got very close to normal.”

“Yeah,” Ben chorused, “I think I’m gonna need a lot of therapy after this, y’all.”

Richie snorted. “Alright, Mr. Nebraska. Don’t be getting above your New England raisin’ just because you’re all midwestern now. _Y’all_.”

“I know,” Stan said, raking his hair back so it was flattened wet on his scalp. “This is gonna be so fucking weird to explain to Patty, but I think she’ll come around.”

There was a quick beat of silence.

“Oh,” Bill said, “you’re, uh, gonna tell her?”

“Yes,” Stan said, slowly, his eyebrows drawing together. He looked from loser to loser. “She’s my wife, I tell her everything. Were you guys, were you _not_ going to? Bill? Eddie?”

Bill looked down, a bit ashamed. “Based on recent events, I uh, I need to work…on my marriage.”

Eddie blew out a breath through his lips. Well. Now was just a good a time as any. “Mine is over.”

“Oh, Eddie.” Ben’s eyes looked concerned and sad. “I’m sure it’s not that bad, if you wanted to fix things—”

“Ben, I really appreciate the sentiment, but my wife and I’s relationship is a mess.” Eddie sighed. It was fucking _hard_ to confront how much of his life he had wasted. Maybe all of it since Derry. “Now that I’ve been back here and I can remember shit, I…I think there’s a lot with my wife that’s reminiscent of, uh, my mom.” He looked up to see Bev a shade away from furious and he rushed to clarify. “I mean, she’s not a bad person, we are just. Not right for each other.”

“What are you going to do, man?” Mike asked, face open and understanding. “If you wanna stick around here for a while, I’d love to have you.”

Eddie laughed and shook his head. “Thanks, Mike, but you deserve to be out of this town as soon as possible. And, she deserves an explanation. Maybe not a completely true explanation, but something. There will be a divorce, though, because, uh.” And here it was. Eddie’s throat was tight, but he knew he had to get this out. He glanced around at the faces of his friends, the people who loved him most, and took a breath. “I’m, I think I’m gay.”

“Hey.” Stan’s voice came from beside him after a moment. “Good job,” he said, clapping a hand to Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie grinned at him, feeling a little dizzy with the relief of it. The confession felt like—he wasn’t sure how to articulate it. It felt—good.

“Yeah, Eddie, we love you, _so_ much.” Bev beamed up at him from where she sat in the water. “Thank you for telling us.”

There was a chorus of similar sentiments from all around him, except—

When Eddie looked over to where Richie stood, he found him strangely quiet. And a little pale, lips pressed together. When he saw Eddie was looking at him, though, he smiled, if a little weakly. 

“So begins the search for a carbon copy of your dad, huh, Eds?” Richie said.

Eddie laughed, the final bit of apprehension in his chest evaporating. Richie didn’t hate him; he didn’t think Eddie was disgusting. The relief he felt was deeper than that he had felt at the acceptance of the other Losers, he knew. _Oh, shit,_ Eddie thought as he looked at Richie standing soaked and disheveled in the quarry water. _I’ve been in love with you for a very long time._

“Oh, fuck you, Trashmouth,” he said, rather than reveal that particular revelation. Richie grinned back, steadier now, and Eddie again felt the urge to kiss it off his mouth. The feeling sent a buzz to his fingers and toes that made his whole-body clench, demanding that he _do_ something. But for now, surrounded by his friends in the quarry water of their youth, Eddie let himself relax.

Eventually, as the sun sank lower in the Maine sky and the chilliness of the water began to seep in past their clothes, the group of them trudged back to the townhouse. 

“Fuck,” Eddie said, remembering the state of his shower. “I’m gonna need to borrow someone’s bathroom. Or, like, an industrial sized tub of bleach.”

“Wha—oh, right, Bowers,” Richie said, then tilted his head to one side. “Should we like, clean that up? Someone’s gonna get charged for that mess, right?”

“They can charge me for the entire hotel, I am not stepping foot inside that room.” Even after the events of the sewers, the idea of having to confront the sight of his own blood coating the bathroom floor in slippery streaks made Eddie a little dizzy. The magic adult-blind blood in Beverly’s bathroom 30 years ago had been gross, sure, but there was something even more nauseating about the idea of cleaning up his own. It seemed somehow even more dangerous than if it was a stranger’s. _That’s me, there, pooling on the floor_. _See how sick I am?_ The illness he had been taught to feel underneath his skin outside him, exposed. Eddie knew, he _knew_ , it was bullshit, of course it was, it was just the paranoia his mother had bred into him manifesting around the feeling of being—well. The unrealized feeling of being gay, he supposed. The knowledge didn’t really make him any less nauseous.

“Don’t worry about it Eddie, we’ll take care of it,” Ben said. “We’ll—call someone?” He looked questioningly to Bill, who shrugged. “We’ll get it cleaned up.”

“Can someone just point me in the direction of my fucking bed?” Stan mumbled from where he was leaning against a wall, eyes closed. “I love you guys, but I have to call my wife and then sleep for at least 14 hours.”

A murmur of assent rippled through the rest of the Losers, and they began to break up to go to their respective rooms. Mike trailed behind Bill, making some kind of comment about how his place was too far and too lonely and, oh yeah, had a dead body in it. Eddie smiled and felt his cheek twinge.

“Hey,” Richie said from beside him and Eddie fought not to jump at the suddenness of his voice, “you wanna crash with me? Since your room got all—extreme home makeovered from the season where they got really into recreating Hitchcocks.” He mimed a stabbing motion, or maybe just a very oddly placed jerk off gag. With Richie, there really was no way to tell.

“That didn’t happen.”

“You shoulda seen the one they did for _The Birds_ , man, it was fucked up,” Richie said, eyes wide. Eddie rolled his. “But seriously, your room is is a fucking crime scene.”

Eddie swallowed, feeling at once nervous and relieved. On the one hand, he really didn’t want to spend the night alone in his room, letting his mind spiral about what the fuck his life had become in the last few days. He certainly didn’t want to deal with the now looming idea that Bowers had gotten into his room, so anyone could. It would feel better to at least share the room with someone. 

But it was Richie. Newly realized childhood, and oh, adulthood too, object of his affections, Richie. Richie, who’s goofy bespectacled face had popped up over his window ledge countless times, cajoling Eddie to let him in with whatever Voice he was practicing that week. And Eddie would roll his eyes and cross his arms, but he would always, always let Richie in.

And here Richie was, opening the door to Eddie. The choice should not be so monumental, Eddie should say no, thank you, and head up to his own room where he could have a panic attack about the state of his life in peace. That was what he should do.

“Uh, yeah, actually,” Eddie heard himself say. “That’d be good, yeah. Fine.”

Richie grinned. “Finally, getting the second Kaspbrack in my bed—oh, hey, is that—yes, no? Cool to say?”

Eddie struggled for a second to follow. “What is? The mom joke? No, but that’s never stopped you before.”

“No, I mean,” Richie said, and stopped. Eddie got it suddenly and felt a wave of embarrassment. 

“Oh—you’ll joke about fucking my _dead mom_ , but not about me, what, being gay?” 

Richie looked a little embarrassed too now. “Well, c’mon. I don’t want to be a dick.”

Eddie snorted, feeling warm. “We grew up in Derry, dude, the bar’s pretty fucking low. But, uh, thanks, I guess. Joke about it like you would everything else I forbid you from joking about.”

Richie’s room looked about how Eddie had expected, rumpled sheets and an open duffel bag on the floor with clothes and shoes spilling out haphazardly. Eddie sighed through his nose.

“Uh, mi casa and all that, I guess,” Richie said, closing the door behind him. “My bathroom’s probably not up to your standards, but there isn’t dried blood all over the place, so.” Richie cleared his throat. “You wanna, like, borrow some clothes or something?”

“Hm?” Eddie said, zoning out a little on the little floral patterns on the probably disease-ridden duvet. “Oh, yeah sure, thanks. I’m showering first, by the way.”

“Oh, you’re gonna shower?” Richie said, rifling through his bag as Eddie glared at the back of his head. 

“If you think I will share a bed or even a fucking _room_ with you if you haven’t cleaned up, you are out of your mind.”

“But _Eds_ …” Richie said as Eddie snatched the clothing from his hands and marched into the bathroom, closing the door with a bang. From the other side, he could hear Richie’s laughter. What an asshole. He’d never wanted to kiss anyone more in his life. 

After the shower, where he’d had to use Richie’s horrifying 3 in 1 body wash, Eddie put on Richie’s sweatpants and unfolded the shirt he had given him. It was a dark teal thing with a very bright yellow print of what looked to be Richie’s face. No text.

“Rich,” he said, exiting the bathroom, “what the fuck is this?”

Richie looked up from whatever he had been doing on his phone, grinning. When he laid eyes on Eddie, however, something flashed across his face and he sat for a second, still.

“Richie?” Eddie said after a moment of no response.

Richie cleared his throat and seemed to snap back into motion. “Oh, that little old thing? Apparently, my face is a hot commodity for those bootleg Japanese t-shirt companies—and they only fucked up my nose a little! Nothing but the best for you, Eds,” he said, blowing an overly saccharine kiss. Eddie rolled his eyes but felt his face heat up anyway. To distract from the flush, he yanked on the shirt and was almost angry to find how soft it was. The fabric was well-worn and a little warm from the shower steam and suddenly the weight of the last few days hit Eddie all at once. He felt woozy on his feet.

“What time is it, man?” Eddie said, collapsing onto the bed. “I feel like I’ve been awake for a week straight.”

“Like 7:45, you ancient fuck,” Richie said with a grin, shoving himself out of the shitty hotel chair. Eddie groaned, feeling every bit of his 40 years. 

“Fuck me. Wake me up in like…10 hours. No, 12. 12 to 14 hours.”

Richie shot him a salute before closing the bathroom door. Eddie heard the water come on and tried very hard not to think about Richie and his broad shoulders naked in the shower. He was too old, too tired for this shit.

After a second though, Eddie didn’t have to worry about anywhere his mind might have wandered, as he could feel his body loosening and sinking into the mattress almost against his will. Even with both of the room’s lamps on, Eddie’s eyes slowly slipped closed and he felt his thoughts start to get…swimmy.

Minutes or hours later, in the weird time travel of almost sleep, Eddie heard the bathroom door open and Richie start to say something, but quickly fall quiet. The glow of the lamps behind his eyelids disappeared suddenly and the bed dipped to his right. 

“G’night, Eds.” Softly, from beside him. Before Eddie could think of a response, he was asleep.

***

Eddie snapped awake, inhaling sharply through his nose. For a moment, he laid on his back, unsure of why he had woken up. The room was quiet and dark, without even the ambient sounds of traffic Eddie was used to in the city. The glowing red digital clock on the bedside table displayed a time somewhere between 2 and 3.

The calm of the room was suddenly disrupted by a groan from beside him. Oh, right. He was sharing a bed with Richie. Bane of his existence, love of his life _Richie._ Who was currently thrashing around slightly and making distressed little whimpering sounds that made Eddie’s chest clench, hard. Without thinking, Eddie reached over and placed a hand on Richie’s arm, sleep warm through the thin material of his t-shirt. When that did nothing to calm him down, Eddie shuffled a little closer in the bed.

“Hey, hey,” Eddie said, trying to pitch his voice somewhere low and calming. It was like using a muscle that had long atrophied; he was maybe the worst equipped person to handle this. “Rich. You okay?”

The noises stopped for a second, but Richie didn’t open his eyes. Eddie was about to roll away again when he heard a mumbled, “Eddie?” Richie’s eyes were still closed, his forehead creased above them. Eddie had a wild thought of smoothing the wrinkles down, suddenly struck with a sadness he’d gotten very familiar with over the last couple days. _We really did grow up without each other, huh?_

“Yeah, it’s me, Trashmouth,” Eddie said, unsure of how to proceed but wanting the weird twisted expression off of Richie’s face. Should he make a joke? Was Richie even _awake_? “I’m here.”

The tension on Richie’s face suddenly cleared and he let out a hum. Within seconds, his breathing evened out and he appeared to be back in a deep sleep. 

Eddie stared at him, unable to move. They were so close now, only a few inches of hotel mattress separating them. Eddie could feel the warmth of Richie’s shoulder radiating out from where his palm still rested. Fuck, but he wanted to be even closer, to slide his hand under Richie’s threadbare t-shirt and lay his head on his chest. In the dark and quiet of the hotel room, Eddie let himself imagine it for exactly one minute before rolling back over and shutting his eyes tightly, willing himself back to sleep.

***

In the morning, Eddie awoke to find they’d drifted together slightly, and Richie’s hand had a loose grip on the back of Eddie’s borrowed shirt. His body still felt exhausted as he slowly disentangled himself from the sheets and Richie, who made a soft noise and turned over, still asleep. His hair was splayed messily over the white pillow and his mouth hung open slightly. Eddie stood over him, taking a moment to fight the smile he could feel gradually spreading across his face. He thought, a bit unbidden, about what it would be like to have this, to have Richie, every morning, to live somewhere where he could push his unruly hair back from his forehead and plant a lingering kiss there. To avoid thinking about how badly he wanted it, Eddie quickly gathered his ruined clothes and exited the room. 

Back in his own room and clothes, Eddie packed up what he had taken out of his bags and booked a flight back to New York. As soon as he clicked the little confirm button, he was gripped with the wild urge to run back to Mike’s and lock himself inside for, oh, another two months? 

He sighed and rested his head on his desk. Maybe it was a bit immature, but Eddie felt like he had done enough being brave to tide him over for this lifetime, maybe a few more after it.

“Hey, I was just—are you alright, man?”

Eddie jolted up to see Richie at the door, holding his bag.

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” Eddie said, rubbing at his eyes. “Sorry I was just—what did you need?”

“Uh, I was just seeing if you were ready with your bags and shit,” Richie said. “You still need a ride to the airport, right?”

Eddie thought about his Escalade, back in some shop in New York. Fuck, it had only been a couple days, but he _missed_ driving. Even in the shittiest New York City streets there was a freedom to being behind the wheel, being alone for however long his commute was. Not that Eddie thought he was an antisocial person, precisely, but he liked those moments of aloneness between work and home, the layers of his car keeping the outside world out.

“Yeah, I took a cab here, so.” For the umpteenth time, Eddie got intensely nervous about sharing a car with Richie for however long the trip to Bangor International was. He had quickly offered back in the quarry, and Eddie hadn’t gotten to think about it too much before he accepted. Eddie didn't really know what he was worrying about anyway; it wasn’t like he was going to fucking jump Richie somewhere on the road Bangor, right? It was just the low-grade anxiety that was Eddie’s baseline, amped up by any proximity to Richie.

The spike in nervousness he got around Richie wasn’t new to his realization in the cave either. It was with a somewhat sickening clarity that Eddie remembered all the childhood instances of doing something, anything, to get Richie’s eyes on him again. It hadn’t exactly been difficult; even in childhood, Richie had seemed happy to feed off of Eddie’s energy, at the annoyance of their other friends. A lot of his memories from Derry were still a little blurry, but the feeling in his stomach when Richie threw his head back to laugh at their back and forth was back with a vengeance.

“You need help then? With your eighteen bags?” Richie said. “Are you sure you weren’t already planning on leaving your wife, man? This has to be your entire fucking closet. Hey—”

“Whatever closet joke you’re about to make, will it be worth the police finding your dead fucking body in one?”

“Tough call, Spaghetti,” Richie said, smiling. Then his face took on a more serious expression. “But, seriously man, thanks for telling us about that, it, uh, couldn’t have been easy.”

Eddie rubbed the back of his neck, half wishing the clown would crawl back up through his sink drain and end this conversation before it could get any further. “Honestly, I don’t think I would have if I hadn’t almost died like twenty different times in the last 24 hours. But you guys were—you _are_ my best friends. I, uh, had to.” When he looked up, Richie was pale like he had been back in the quarry. Okay, so talking about this clearly made him uncomfortable, fucking noted. “Anyway, bags?”

Down in the parking lot, Eddie came to an important realization.

“Richie, your car is fucking _tiny_.”

Richie scoffed, dropping his bag and one of Eddie’s onto the pavement. “It’s a fucking rental, man, I didn’t get it for the leg room.”

“Why _not,_ you’re fucking—eight feet tall!” Eddie said, then felt his face heat up. Best not to reveal how much he had…noticed Richie’s height, or his large, square hands, or his—

Eddie opened the car door with perhaps too much force, eager to get away from that particular train of thought. “Trashmouth, are you fucking kidding me. How am I supposed to fit any of my shit in here, man?”

“I don’t know, stack ‘em on the backseat or something,” Richie shrugged as he wrestled his own duffel into the car’s small trunk.

“And completely block out the review?”

“Does anyone use that thing, anyway?” Richie said.

Eddie stared for a second at Richie, the more confusing things he had been feeling now completely eclipsed by disbelief. He closed his eyes. “You’re fucking with me. You’re fucking with me and you use the _rearview fucking mirror, Richie_ , or I am never getting in a car with you again.”

Richie just grinned.

It was gonna be a long fucking ride.

***

An hour later they were on the road, the townhouse growing smaller in the unobscured rearview. It had taken them a while to say goodbye to the other Losers, and Eddie hadn’t wanted to say anything, but a not insignificant part of him was sure that he would forget all over again as soon as he passed the town limits. Even if it was an idle fear, Eddie tried his best to memorize each of his friends as he said goodbye. The curl of Bev’s hair behind her ear, Ben’s easy smile, the wrinkles around Mike’s warm eyes. How Stan gripped his shoulder, how Bill ran his hands through his hair. His friends, the old parts of them and the new.

And Richie. Eddie was determined to never forget Richie again.

It was quiet now, in the car. Quiet like it almost never was around Richie, especially when it was the two of them together. Man, they had annoyed the shit out of their teachers back in school. And Stan too, Eddie thought, remembering how he had rolled his eyes whenever Eddie and Richie had gotten particularly into it with each other. He snorted.

“What?” Richie said.

“No, sorry,” Eddie said, waving his hand, “I’m just thinking about how pissed Stan, young Stan, would be if he could see us two, now, sitting in perfect silence.”

Richie huffed out a laugh. “He’d fucking light this car on fire, are you kidding? Do you remember how much we used to annoy him?”

“Do you remember,” Eddie said, “do you remember how angry he got the time we got all of us kicked out of the movie theatre during—fuck what _was_ it? Some fucking movie, a romance maybe?” Stan had fumed for the entire rest of the day and it had taken several hours of Richie’s increasingly Voiced pleading until he had relented and spoken to them again.

“Nah, man, it was that one with Robin Williams, the like, school one,” Richie said, and then stopped.

“Oh, right.” Eddie remembered, suddenly, watching a movie whose lead with impressive eyebrows had reminded him in turns of both Bill and Richie. A second lead whose stuttering nervousness reminded Eddie of himself at times. “I don’t think I ever learned how that movie ended.”  
Richie seemed to wince. “Uh, don’t. It’s—not a happy ending.”

“Oh.”

Silence filled the car once again. Alright. Eddie broke it the first time, it wasn’t his responsibility to do it again. And, besides, this was Richie; Eddie was more confident that he would send the car careening off the road than remain silent for more than half the trip.

Sure enough, a few minutes later: “You think they’re fucking?

Eddie scrolled back in their conversation. “Robin…Williams?”

“Bev and Ben. That underwater kiss was…” Richie said, trailing off, his eyebrows up in a sort of _hoo boy_ expression.

Eddie laughed a little. “Cinematic? Well—maybe a little too much tongue for the matinee.”

“Gross,” Richie said, smiling.

“Gross,” Eddie agreed. “But, you know, good for Ben. They deserve to be gross; I think we all do.”

“Yeah, but do they have to be so hot about it?” Richie said, making a face.

Eddie snorted. “All our fucking friends, man. But, uh, speaking of, are you like that? With your, ah, _girl_?” 

Eddie didn’t _really_ want to know the answer to that question, but maybe if he found out how sickly-sweet Richie was about Sandy, he would stop replaying the moment in the cavern in his head, over and over. His hand on Richie’s face, Richie sprawled underneath him and looking up at him, eyes wide, like Eddie was…something. Probably not, but it might keep Eddie from thinking about some wild alternate reality where he did kiss Richie and Richie had somehow _wanted_ him to. If he dwelled on it, he was going to drive himself insane.

“Fuck you,” Richie said automatically. “But, no man, we’re not like that. I don’t know if I could _ever_ be like that, you know? With, uh, with anyone.” Immediately, Richie grimaced a little. Right—a little too much sincerity for the Trashmouth.

“No, I get that,” Eddie said, “before I, uh, came to terms with—being, um, gay.” And there it was, out again. Someday it would be easier, Eddie hoped. “I didn’t think I was, like, built for love like that. It seemed like something for…other people.”

“Eddie, hey—”

“I mean,” Eddie continued, kind of desperate to get whatever he was trying to say all out at once, “even at the best of times, with my wife, it was pretty fucking mediocre. Which, well, there were, are, a lot of fucking reasons for that, but.” Eddie shook his head. “I’m losing my point. My point, my point is that I understand what you’re saying. And I don’t really think something like that, even now, is in the cards for me. I mean,” he said, trying to lighten up what he now realized was a very grim confession, “I’m a 40-year-old breakdown waiting to happen. And I, uh, don’t know much about the gay scene, but I don’t think that’s a niche that needs to be filled.”

During his whole little speech, Eddie had been focusing as intently as he could on the Maine highway in front of him, twisting and untwisting the strings on his hoodie, so he wouldn’t have to look over at Richie and see—he didn’t know—pity? Disgust? Which would be worse, honestly?

“Eddie.” Richie’s voice sounded—weird. Choked, almost. Something in it made Eddie look over at him in little jumps, down to his own hands, to the console between them, to Richie’s seatbelt, until his eyes finally landed on Richie’s face. He wasn’t quite looking at Eddie, which, thank god, the last thing Eddie wanted to add to this conversation was a fucking car crash. Or, the jury was still out, depending on how the next few minutes went. “Eds, fuck, man, don’t say shit like that.” Richie’s expression seemed cracked open, something strange written in the exposed spaces. 

“I—yeah, I’m sorry, that was kind of grim, I shouldn’t be, like, unloading this on you,” Eddie said, kind of wishing they could go back to the stifling silence. 

“No! No, that’s not what I’m talking about,” Richie said, sounding frustrated. “I—listen, Eds. Do you want that?”

“What?”

“That Ben and Bev love, that, like, gross shit?”

Eddie could feel himself blushing, all the way up to his ears. “I mean—I, I guess?”

“Then you should have it. Listen,” Richie said again, “you were right, what you said earlier, we all deserve to be that gross kind of in love, even you. Especially you, Eddie. You deserve everything you want; you deserve someone looking at you like,” he gestured with a hand, “that.”

Eddie was surprised he could even hear what Richie was saying over the beat of his own heart, pumping loud in his chest. _Fuck_ , he thought, _would you? Please?_ He shook his head, but it remained fogged with the idea of Richie looking at him like Ben did to Bev, like he was—

No. No, Eddie was not going down this road. Richie was not Ben; Eddie was not Bev. The end of this story was not the sickeningly sweet resolution of a grade school crush. It ended with—with Eddie in therapy, probably. Fuck.

“Oh, uh, thank you,” Eddie said, hesitant. “Um, you too, you know.”

Richie snorted, and then let out a breath that sounded a little shaky. “Thanks, Eddie Spaghetti. Anyway,” he said, in an almost Voice, “enough of that depressing shit, eh? Let’s see what rural Maine radio is like nowadays.” Richie jabbed at the radio controls with a kind of desperation until something loud and jarring filled the spaces within the car. 

***

Eddie didn’t want to get out of the car. If he got out of the car, he would have to go into the airport, and if he went into the airport, he would have to call Myra. Which, he knew he had to do, eventually. She had nearly filled his voicemail with calls of her own, not that Eddie could listen to any of them without the intense urge to empty the contents of his stomach.

“So,” Eddie said. “I guess I should. Go in there.”

“Hey man, just give me the word, we can take off and keep going till we hit Cali.” Richie’s tone was joking, but his face looked shockingly earnest as he watched Eddie from the driver’s seat. Eddie scowled to cover up how much everything in his body was screaming for him to accept and go on some weird fucking road trip with Richie in his tiny bright red convertible. But, no, Richie wasn’t seriously offering, and there was no way Eddie would survive even one night in a motel room alone with him.

“And what, stay in every motel between here and LA? I’d rather go break up with my wife.”

“Motel? How much money do you think I make? We’d definitely be sleeping in the car,” Richie said, grinning.

“If you’re trying to make my divorce look fucking peachy,” Eddie said, “it’s working. Tell me about how you didn’t pack a toothbrush and I’ll be on the plane in the next 30 seconds.”

“Like I even own a toiletry bag at all, dude.”

“Okay, well, thanks for the ride,” Eddie said, making as if to open the car door. Richie laughed and Eddie’s hand fell back to his lap.

“You don’t have to do this right now, you know,” Richie said after a moment. “No one would blame you if you did hide out at Mike’s for a little while.”

 _I do, though, I would,_ Eddie thought. He had the overwhelming feeling that if he didn’t see Myra _today,_ he would never be able to confront her, and it would loom in his mind until he died from stress at the ripe old age of 45. He sighed. “Nah, man, I gotta go back and tell her something. But, uh, thanks.” Eddie reached over the console to grab Richie’s shoulder as a goodbye, but Richie must have misinterpreted the gesture because suddenly Eddie was being hugged. Very tightly.

He was still for a second, caught off guard, but quickly hugged Richie back just as close. The scratch of stubble on his cheek was not as unwelcome as Eddie of a week ago would have claimed and Richie’s hand was clutching the back of Eddie’s jacket like an anchor. Should he feel guilty, pressed up against Richie like this? _No_ , a small voice inside him decided, _fuck it._ In a few hours, Richie was going to fly back to California and back to his nice girlfriend, but for now he was here, hugging Eddie. 

“Well, Eds, you should probably go get on your flight,” Richie said into his shoulder. “You only have, like, 3 hours to get though security.”

Eddie laughed, feeling a little like he might cry. “Get off me, asshole,” he said, clinging even tighter.

“ _Get off me, asshole,_ ” Richie parroted back in a halfway decent approximation of Eddie’s voice, though he wasn’t sure if the choked-up quality of Richie’s voice was in imitation or earnest. Up this close, Eddie could smell Richie’s shampoo and he resisted the urge to bury his nose in the junction of Richie’s shoulder and neck. That thought was what finally drove Eddie to pull back out of the embrace. 

He cleared his throat. “Uh, well, I guess I’ll get out of your hair now.” He pulled at the door handle and then stopped. “Hey, wait, you have a flight too, right?”

“Hell yeah I do, you think this baby,” Richie slapped the dashboard of his horribly impractical rental car, “is gonna carry me all the way to California? I would die in like, Idaho.”

“You should not be anywhere _near_ Idaho on a trip from Maine to California, dude,” Eddie said, trying to keep fondness from creeping into his voice.

“All the more reason I’d bite it, _dude_.” From Richie’s returning smile, Eddie didn’t think he’d succeeded very much. He didn’t mind. “But, nah, my flight’s in like five hours. I have to make some uncomfortable fucking phone calls before I tell Maine to fuck off.”

Eddie nodded, feeling the dread in his stomach amplify. “You can call me, you know,” he blurted out, and then immediately felt intensely embarrassed. “If you want some less uncomfortable phone calls, I mean.”

“I don’t know man, you yell at me more than my manager is about to,” Richie said, but he looked pleased at Eddie’s outburst. “You promise to put your mom on the phone after?”

Eddie rolled his eyes and finally yanked the car door open.

Inside the airport, Eddie stared down at his phone. He was going to call her, he was, he just needed another few minutes to get used to the idea—

His phone lit up, displaying Myra’s name. Ok, well, now was good too.

“Hello?”

“Eddie? Eddie, is that you?”

“Yes, Myra, I—”

“Eddie, where have you _been_?” Myra’s voice sounded equal parts afraid, angry, and confused. “I’ve been worried _sick_ , trying to reach you for almost two days and you haven’t responded to anything I’ve said! I thought you were dead, Eddie!”

“I can’t talk about it right now, I’m about to board the plane back to New York,” Eddie said. “I’ll be back home in a couple hours and we can talk about it then, I swear.”

“Eddie,” Myra said, the confusion seeming to edge out everything else in her voice, “what happened to you?”

Eddie fought the urge to laugh, knowing it would come out hysteric. “I’ll tell you about it tonight, Marty, I just wanted to let you know I’m on my way back.”

“Well, I’m glad, but you should have said something earlier, I was _so_ worried,” Myra said. “Do you need me to pick you up at the airport?”

“No, I’ll just get a cab—listen, the plane is boarding, I’ll call you when I land,” Eddie said, a bit ashamed of how quickly he wanted to get off of the call. 

“But Eddie—”

“I have to go, Myra, love you,” Eddie said out of habit, and then felt swamped in guilt and hung up before he could hear her response. He rested his head against the table in front of him and thought of 24 hours in the future when this conversation would be behind him.

***

Back in his and Myra’s shared apartment, Eddie sat very still as she fussed over him.

“You leave for two days and come back with _stitches_ in your _face_ , Eddie, I don’t understand, you’re usually so careful!” Myra said as she looked over the work of the staff of the New York clinic he’d stopped in because he’d been too cowardly to just go home to his wife. That, and the wound needed some fucking attention. “I still don’t even know where you _went.”_

At least that was an easy question to answer. “I was in Maine—Derry, Maine. The town where I grew up,” Eddie clarified upon Myra’s confused expression.

“But— _why_?” Myra seemed close to tears. She had already cried quite a bit when he first came back and Eddie had felt a guilty thrill in his ability to suppress the urge to immediately roll over and placate. He tried to do the same now.

“Back in Derry, I had this…group of friends.” Oh, how to describe the Losers? “We hung out as kids, you know, biking around and shit, all of us not cool enough to hang out with anyone but each other. It was—I mean it might have been one of the happiest periods of my life.”

“Why have I never heard about these people before, Eddie?” Myra said, eyebrows drawn tightly. “Why did you—why didn’t you tell me about this?” Her face was still mottled from her unshed tears and abruptly Eddie felt very bad about the conversation they were about to have.

“I forgot, actually, for the longest time.” _I forgot everything,_ Eddie thought. _Pennywise. My friends. Being brave._ “Then, uh, one of them called.”

“So you _left_?” Myra’s anger was back now. “Eddie, I am your _wife_ , you need to tell me things like this! And, you know, I don’t think impromptu trips like that are good for your anxiety, Eddie, you really should have talked to me first.”

Eddie shook his head, refusing to get dragged down into another conversation about his health. The anxiety disorder was probably not inaccurate, but the way he had been medicating was suffocating him. “No, there’s more to it. One of my friends almost fucking died, Myra, a bunch of kids almost _died_.”

“Eddie, you’re not making any sense,” she said. “You’re scaring me.”

“It was _scary_. The asshole who beat us up in middle school broke out of his institution and tried to fix the mistake he’d made by letting us get out of that town alive. This,” he gestured to his cheek, “was a result of me not checking for him behind the shower curtain.”

“Oh, Eddie! He _stabbed_ you? Did you call the police, oh, should we file a report—”

“He’s dead now,” Eddie said with an air of finality that he hoped would stick around for the second half of this conversation. “And that’s not really what I wanted to talk about. Myra, I—”

“He’s _dead_?” Myra said, placing her hand over her heart. “What kind of town did you grow up in?”

Eddie opened his mouth to answer her, to explain the horrors of growing up in Derry, in the 80s. _And gay,_ his mind supplied. But, no. He needed to stay on track. He needed to have this conversation, then he needed to—he didn’t know, get out of here, probably. 

“Myra, we need to talk.”

“Do you need a Xanax, honey? Or, I think I have a few Klonopin left from—”

“Myra!” Eddie’s voice echoed off the kitchen walls. Myra stopped talking and stared openly at him. “Myra, I—”

“Don’t _shout_ at me, Eddie Kaspbrack, I’m just trying to _help_ you, for goodness’ sake,” Myra said, two spots of color high on her cheeks. “We can talk after we get you something to help you calm down and you take a nap. You’re being so _grumpy_ , honestly Eddie.”

Eddie felt as if the apartment were swimming around him. It would be easy, _so_ easy, to sink back into her cloying kindness, to forget everything he’d been trying to relearn. To say yes, alright, I’ll take something, I’ll go to bed. I’ll give in.

Eddie was sick to shit of taking the easy way out.

“Myra, I’m gay.”

In the few times Eddie had been able to imagine his way through this conversation, he had never started it like that, but here it was, hanging in the air. In his musings, he also hadn’t known quite what to expect in reaction, but he certainly hadn’t foreseen Myra’s currently perfectly calm expression. 

“No you’re not. We’re married,” she said simply.

When she failed to say anything more, Eddie slowly tried to verbalize something. “I—what? Yes, I _am_.”

“You’re not gay, Eddie,” Myra said, “I would have noticed something. Honestly, if you want to get out of this conversation, there are better ways than this. It’s a little…offensive.”

Distantly, Eddie was aware of the slack jawed expression on his face and, somewhere deep inside, something angry building. “It’s—I’m not being _offensive;_ I am a gay man!”

Myra’s expression finally took on something that looked a little like worry, like a ship slowly taking on water. “Eddie,” she said slowly, “you’re not gay. If you were gay, why would you have married me? And,” her face turned a bit pink, “I know we don’t…have sex _often,_ but we, we have before.”

“Myra, I’m sorry,” Eddie said, and the apology seemed like it shocked her more than anything else so far had. Fuck, he was a shitty husband. “But, I’m not who you thought you married.” _I’m not who I thought I was when we got married._

“Where is this _coming_ from? Are you—did you cheat on me?”

“No, _no_ ,” Eddie said, desperate to claim this last vestige of being a good husband. Although, if he was being completely honest with himself, if things had gone a little differently in Derry, if Richie had—Eddie didn’t quite know what he would have done. “I haven’t cheated on you Myra, I swear. Just—when I was back in Derry, a few things happened that made me…reconsider. Some things about my life.”

“Like—like me?” Myra said. “Eddie, I don’t understand, you’ve never said anything like this before. Not in the _twelve years_ we’ve been married!”

“I know, I know, and I really am sorry,” Eddie said. He took a deep breath before he continued. “But Myra—I think we need to get divorced.”

“Eddie!” Her voice was piercing. “What do you—no, Eddie, you need to go to bed, think about this for a little while and then you’ll realize you don’t mean any of this—”

“I have thought about this. We’re not _good_ for each other, Myra, we never have been.”

“Oh, don’t _say_ that,” Myra said, fully crying now. “We’ve been doing just fine up until now; I don’t understand why you have to come in and wreck _everything._ ”

 _I’m sorry_ , Eddie thought but didn’t say. He felt a little guilty about imploding their shared life, but he was finished groveling, finished returning to a norm that was slowly turning his organs to glue.

***

Eddie sat inside his newly repaired Escalade, staring at his phone. Myra had asked him, tears in her eyes, to stay, but he had felt a great bubble of fear in his chest at the thought of spending another night in their pleasantly decorated apartment. Now, however, he wasn’t certain he made the right choice. What the fuck was he going to do now? Get a hotel? There’s no way he would be able to get another apartment at this short of a notice, especially one that was up to his standards. Fuck, maybe he should just go back inside, but no, that would be worse than anything—to come walking back, cowed. 

Eddie scrolled through his contacts, wanting to call someone to quiet the anxious voices ringing off the inside of his skull. He was so _tired_. Impossibly, it seemed, he had left Derry just that morning.

Before he could talk himself out of it, he selected the little tab that said _Bev_ and hit call.

“Hey,” said a very male voice on the other end—Ben.

“Oh, hi, Ben,” Eddie said, and then stopped, a little unsure.

“Sorry, you probably meant to get Bev,” Ben said, voice warming at the mere mention of her name. Fuck, Eddie hoped _he_ wasn’t that transparent. “She’s asleep, but I wanted to answer just in case it was an urgent thing, you know? I could wake her up if you need?”

“Oh, no, don’t do that, I was just…” Eddie hesitated. He had called Bev because if anyone was going to be able to tell him what to do in this situation, it would be Beverly. “Nevermind, I’ll call back.”

“Oh, sure,” Ben said. “Whatever you need Eddie, we’re here for you, both of us.”

“I left my wife.”

There was silence on the other end of the line, just for a second. 

“Oh,” Ben said. “Oh, right. How are you doing, Eddie? You need anything? We haven’t left Derry quite yet, but we could fly down and stay with you for a couple days if you want.”

Eddie laughed a little hysterically. “Where would you even stay? I’m sitting in my car, I have nowhere to go, I can’t go back in there, Ben, I _can’t_ , and—how am I even going to do this?”

“Hey, hey, Eddie,” Ben said, voice soft but strong. “You’ve already done the hardest part. And you have all of us, for whatever you need.”

“Yeah, I know.” Eddie rested his forehead on his steering wheel, careful to do it lightly enough as to not set off the horn. “It’s just—I don’t even know where to start.”

“It’s alright to not know. And, it’s alright to ask for help if you need it.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, embarrassed by how thick his voice sounded. He cleared his throat.

“Hey Ben, is it alright to cry in my car on the phone to my dear childhood friend?”

“Only if you don’t mind if I join in,” Ben said, a smile in his voice. “Listen, it might seem like…a lot, right now, but eventually there’s gonna come a day where you won’t even think about this shit, I promise.”

“Oh, well, if you promise.”

Ben laughed. “For now, though, get a hotel room. It’ll look better in the morning. And, I mean,” Ben continued, “I’m sure one of your ridiculously rich and famous friends has contacts in New York, you’ll get an apartment in no time.”

“Thanks Ben, really,” Eddie said, tears really threatening to spill over now. It seemed so much more achievable when Ben outlined it, slow and calm. “I’m going to get on booking that room, tell Bev to call me back when she can, no rush. I, uh, I love you guys.” It was weird to have new people to say that to, and to mean it _so much._

“We love you too,” Ben said, his voice soft again. “Call us as much as you’d like.”

Taking Ben’s advice, he booked a hotel room and spent the remainder of the night with his phone silenced, not quite ready to face Myra’s calls.

The next morning, he opened his phone to find that while, yes, Myra had called and left him 5 different voicemails, there were a couple of texts. Some from Myra, but some from Beverly apologizing and asking when she should call. And, as he scrolled to the very bottom of his notifications, three from Richie.

**hey a little birdie told me you need a place to stay i know a guy who’s looking to sublet**

**he’s an asshole but a rich one the place should be up to your standards**

**a little ben-die? is that anything?**

Eddie smiled and tapped out a response.

_Yeah, thanks. Send me his number and I can handle the rest._

He went to put his phone down, not really expecting a response from Richie at what had to be around 6 in the morning California time, but it buzzed almost immediately.

Richie had responded with a contact card and a text that read **“i can handle the rest” don’t fucking kill this guy eds my agent would have a fit**.

_How does he not already when you text like that? You know it actually takes MORE effort to go to settings and turn off autocapitalization than to just write sentences like a normal human being, right?_

Suddenly, the phone vibrated and Richie’s contact picture—one he had taken of himself on their first night back in Derry where he was blurry and smiling and probably drunk off his ass—filled the screen. Eddie tapped to answer before he could think about it.

“Hello?”

“Y’know, I’m actually kind of embarrassed to learn about the settings thing. I was just like, backspacing,” Richie said. “Takes me about 15 minutes to send one text.”

“I think that’s actually above average for people our age, congratulations.” Eddie felt something warm in his chest, even though it hadn’t even been 24 hours since they’d last spoken. “But also, fuck you.”

Richie laughed, and the warm feeling threatened to spread into his limbs. “Hey, I have to keep up with the fucking trends, man, I’ve got a twitter to upkeep. My fans are not sustained on forehead pics alone.”

“Why the fuck would anyone follow you on twitter? You’re not even funny in person,” Eddie said, halfway wanting to open the app on his phone right now and find Richie. He was stopped by the notion that maybe he didn’t want to see a glimpse into Richie pre-Derry—if his life before was anything like Eddie’s, he wanted to give Richie enough space to process it on his own. And, Eddie felt with not a small amount of guilt, if his life was perfectly pleasant and happy before this, he wanted to see it even less. Which, Eddie had no reason to think it wasn’t. Richie was working his dream job, he lived in LA, he had longtime girlfriend. Man, Eddie was pathetic.

“Fuck if I know,” Richie said. “Hey, congratulations on leaving your wife, by the way.”

“Well, I mean,” Eddie said, feeling weird in the face of Richie’s sincerity. “I said I would.”

“Yeah, but like, I tell my dad I’ll stop chewing ice every time I see him, but do I? Fuck no. I get a McDonald’s iced tea and I go to town, like, every other day. You fucking stuck to your guns.”

“You should really stop chewing ice, you’re gonna fuck up your enamel and get dentures at 50,” Eddie said, unable to keep a smile off his face. “But thanks.”

“No problem,” Richie said, sounding like he was smiling too. “If you ever need to feel better about your life, give me a call.”

“How are you, though? In California? How’s, um, Sandy?” Eddie asked, and then immediately regretted it. Why did he want to hear about that—so he could picture more accurately Richie’s happy little domestic life? So he could add high definition scenes of them hip checking each other in the kitchen, laughing at inside jokes?

“Oh, yeah, she’s not actually home right now,” Richie said. “She’s been on this tour with her improv group for a couple weeks, she gets back on Friday.”

“Oh.” Eddie felt weird, suddenly. “So, have you—told her? About Derry?”

Richie made some indecisive noises. “I know I should, you know, but like—how the fuck do I even start? ‘Hey, babe, you know my weird clown thing? Well, turns out I have a fucking _banger_ of an explanation behind that, where to start—you know the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs?’”

“Yeah, I get that,” Eddie said, trying desperately to avoid thinking about Richie calling anyone babe. “However shitty it is, somehow it feels like the easy way out to just pop back into town and—divorce.”

“Yeah, but it’ll cost you a hell of lot more in alimony payments.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie said, and groaned. “I need to get a lawyer.”

“Kind of sucks that none of us became a crackshot lawyer, yeah?” Richie said. “Architect, author, whatever the fuck it is you do—”

“You _know_ what I do.”

“—the best comedian on the West Coast—”

“You don’t even fucking write your own material, you giant douchebag,” Eddie said, smiling despite himself.

“—a fashion designer, librarian, and—hey what does Stan do, Stan’s basically a lawyer right? Just use him. Friends and family discount.”

“I’d say you’re a fucking idiot, but Stan could probably handle it.”

“Right?” Richie said, and laughed. “Too bad he lives in Bumfuck, Georgia.”

“Yeah.” Eddie abruptly felt very sad. “Kind of crazy how spread out we all are now, right? How much would you bet that the rest of our high school class is still in Maine?”

Richie hummed. “Oh, all of ‘em, for sure. We should—,” Richie said and then stopped. Eddie waited a second before prompting him.

“Should?”

“Is it weird to suggest we pick someone’s glass mansion to crash at for like a week or something? It is an absolute fact that Ben has built a house in every state from Maine to California, we’ll just use one of them and have like a week-long sleepover.” Then Richie sighed, the phone speaker turning it crackly. “I don’t fucking know how to have adult friendships, Eds.”

“I wish I could give you advice,” Eddie said, relieved at his admission, “but I don’t have the first fucking clue. I’m pretty sure I don’t even know the first names of the people who work in my office.” 

“That’s fucked up, doesn’t that go against everything in that—fuckin—Dale Carnegie book?” Richie said. “You should know the name of everyone in your building man, don’t you wanna win friends?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Eddie said. “Why would I want to make friends at my job?”

“Yeah, good point,” Richie said around a yawn. “You’re probably the most exciting motherfucker there and we both know what you’re like.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie said, but he knew there was no heat behind it. He got the feeling he wouldn’t be able to get angry at any of the Losers for some time; he was too full of relief to contain much else. “Hey, are you fucking falling asleep on me?”

“Nah, dude, you haven’t started describing your job yet,” Richie said, and Eddie heard an intake of breath that sounded like another yawn. “Fuck _me._ ”

“Go back to bed, Richie,” Eddie said, feeling incredibly fond imagining Richie sprawled out in a dark apartment somewhere in LA, rumpled and sleepy looking.

“Back? Eddie, baby, I never went to sleep.”

“What?” Eddie said. “Why? It’s been like—24 hours!”

“I’m testing my physical limits, what else?”

“Richie.”

“I don’t know, man,” Richie said, blowing out a breath. “It’s just—weird. To remember so much shit all at once. Like—in retrospect, a lot of shit makes sense, you know?”

“Yeah.” Eddie knew. Why he’d looked an extra second at women with short red hair, why he’d gotten intensely nervous around tall, scruffy looking men with glasses. Not that he’d run into many of the latter in his line of work, but in the short period before he’d met Myra he’d gone to bars with some frequency. _Not_ that he’d ever been able to confront that the feeling he’d gotten around these men was attraction, but it was still there, burning in his stomach. “It kind of feels like—I just woke up.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Richie said. “And, that clown made it his fucking life mission to give us nightmares for life.”

Eddie suddenly remembered the previous night in Derry, seeing Richie agonize in his sleep and felt a pang in his chest. He wanted intensely to be there at Richie’s bedside to grab his hand and comfort him back to sleep, to even hold Richie close to his chest to keep him still and safe. Thinking of Richie alone somewhere in an apartment hurt.

“Yeah, I’m glad I’m not going to be sharing a bed for a long time,” Eddie said, trying to remind himself that Richie already had a person to hold him and soothe him back to sleep and that he didn’t need Eddie to creepily imagine doing it. “Now go to _sleep_ , Richie.”

“If only your mom was still alive,” Richie sighed, “I always fell right asleep after what _we_ did—”

Eddie hung up before he could finish the sentence. A few seconds later, Richie texted him, a couple of emojis with big, dewy eyes. Eddie snorted and closed his eyes.

***

Before he had headed to Derry, Eddie had asked for the entire week off, and now he was grateful. Giving into his brain a little, he had made a checklist of all the shit he had to accomplish in the next week, ranked in order of urgency. Number one was _get an apartment._

Dealing with Richie’s friend was surprisingly easy, even if he did exclusively refer to Eddie as “bro.” The apartment was smaller than his and Myra’s and the largest window was about 2 feet away from an opposing brick wall, but he liked it. It took him about 14 minutes to unpack his bags, the same bags he brought to Derry, into the smallish Ikea dresser. When he got to his toiletry bag, he slowly unpacked the rattle of prescription pills. Eddie stared at the little orange bottles, contemplating throwing them away, but instead just slowly added _find a new GP_ to his ever-growing to-do list. 

Next on his list, _call Bev/lawyer_ , was accomplished later that evening. He watched the light fade from behind his window curtains as Beverly told him about her divorce lawyer.

“She’s amazing, pantsuits all the way down,” Bev sighed. “If I wasn’t all in with Ben, I would ask her to marry me.”

Finding his own lawyer was a bit harder, but after some shopping around, he landed on an older man who was quick and competent with a dry sense of humor who, funnily enough, did remind him a bit of Stan.

Throughout the week, Eddie found himself talking to the other Losers more regularly than he had stayed in contact with anyone else in his adult life. Like it had always been, it was just _easy_ to keep a conversation with one of them, no matter what the topic was. Somewhere before leaving Derry, Bill had insisted they make a group chat, lest they forget each other again. What began as confirmations of life quickly morphed into something more hectic and stupid, where someone would bring up a memory, someone else would commiserate, Richie would be crass, and Stan would leave the chat only to be dragged back in by Ben or Mike. Eddie loved it.

When he finally did go back to work, Eddie was a little nervous. Not because of any work he had missed, he could do risk analysis in his sleep, but because he had been vaguely wondering all week if this were one of the aspects of his life he would hate post-Derry awakening. It took him a couple hours back in the office to realize, no, actually, this part of his life was okay. He liked the organization, the cleanliness of a job well done. Looking at information compiled colorfully into a spreadsheet gave Eddie a sense of peace.

He did hate the junior associates, though.

Well, one of them specifically. Eddie hadn’t been lying when he had told Richie he didn’t know most of their names and he didn’t know this guy’s—Tom or Tim or something else one syllable and annoying—but he was ruining Eddie’s life.

“Hey, Kaspbrack,” Tim/Tom said, which was one of the things that made Eddie grit his teeth the most. “Kaspbrack” made Eddie feel like he was supposed to be one of the overgrown kids who had shoved him around in high school. Not that he was particularly comfortable with this asshole calling him Eddie, either. Preferably, he wouldn’t refer to him at all. “You’ve finished that report, right?”

“Yeah?”

“You know you have to send a copy to Heather right? Before you submit it, make sure you do that.”

“I did, I—you know I’ve worked here for almost 13 years, right?” Eddie said, feeling the kind of anger that always struck him while being talked down to. It was a familiar feeling.

“Just checking, man!” Tim/Tom shot Eddie a thumbs up that somehow managed to look smarmy and exited the break room. Eddie resisted the urge to sink his head into his hands, and accidentally made eye contact with the other junior associate across the room. To his surprise, she widened her eyes in what looked like solidarity and adapted some kind of grimace-smile. 

“He’s kind of an asshole, right?”

Feeling slightly embarrassed, Eddie realized he didn’t know her name either, but he felt none of the animosity he did towards one syllable asshole. To be fair, his relative warmness towards her may have been due to her long, red hair that was often pulled back and up behind her head.

“Uh, yeah,” Eddie said. “A fucking incompetent one.”

She snorted. “No kidding.”

The exchange settled, in the way that Eddie knew he could, and maybe should, leave dead. On an impulse, he didn’t.

“Hey,” Eddie said, then regretted it. “Uh, I’m sorry—what was your name, again?”

She looked at him a little strangely, and then laughed. “Okay, so you’re kind of an asshole, too. But it’s Allison, Eddie,” she said a little pointedly, which, fair. “I’ve worked here for like four years.”

“Would it help if I said I didn’t know his name either?” Eddie said, gesturing towards the door.

“Wow,” Allison said, shaking her head and smiling. “You’d fail that—like, college test. The one where the janitor’s name is part of the final grade?”

“That can’t be a real thing.”

“Oh, it totally was!” Allison said. “Also—doesn’t that go against all those Dale Carnegie rules? Haven’t you ever taken a business class?”

Eddie jolted, then groaned. “That’s exactly what my friend said when I told him and I fucking hate that he’s right. That fucker’s never won friends or influenced people in his life.”

Allison laughed, scrunching up her nose, and Eddie found that he wasn’t regretting prolonging the conversation with her. Maybe chatting with his coworkers was something he could do now, too. Maybe there was an entire world of things he could do in this new, post-Derry skin.

***

Somewhere in the weeks following, between meetings with his lawyer and less and less frequent panic attacks on his new apartment’s bathroom floor, Richie called again.

“Hey,” Richie said, “do you remember what book it was Ben was really into like—freshman year? I’m trying to come up with an engagement party gift so good he’ll build me a house.”

“They got engaged?” Eddie said, shocked enough that he almost dropped the phone completely. It had only been about a month and a half since Derry, and last he knew, Bev was still embroiled in complicated divorce proceedings.

“Oh, no, no. But, I mean, it’s only a matter of time, right? I want to get ahead of the game,” Richie said. “It was some old ass shit, right? Something, like, Roman?” 

“I mean, that was the year after Beverly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it _was_ ancient Roman love poems,” Eddie said, “but no, I think it was like—the Odyssey or something?”

“Oh, yep, that was totally it.” Richie whistled, the phone speaker turning it a bit piercing. “Man, Ben was a fucking intense 14-year-old, huh?” 

“Yeah,” Eddie said, thinking of the way Ben had carried around the dogeared Derry Library copy of the Odyssey for weeks past its due date. “Why _did_ he like it so much?”

“Why’d he like anything back then? He thought it was romantic,” Richie said, and Eddie could hear the smile of recollection in his voice. “Something about coming home to the love of your life.” 

“Ben really didn’t try to hide anything, did he,” Eddie said, thinking about the story. He wasn’t overly familiar with it, but he had taken a classics course in his freshman year of college to fulfill an English requirement. His professor had made them read and analyze the two main works of Homer and he didn’t know why, but something about them had always stuck in his teeth. Now, he could clearly remember the moony eyed look Ben would get when talking about Penelope, waiting and waiting for the return of her husband, ever faithful. Eddie wonders if Ben has ever carved something from an olive tree, hands tracing along something he didn’t know he was missing.

“Yeah.” Richie’s voice sounded weird for a second. He cleared his throat. “Weird, I was a theatre major for two years—never read those books.”

“Two years?”

“Oh, yeah, I dropped the fuck out after sophomore year,” Richie said. “My parents were _not_ thrilled, but at that point I knew I was just gonna shoot my shot on the comedy scene.”

Eddie groaned. “You know I work in risk analysis, why would you fucking tell me that?”

“Aw, are you getting anxious about little Richie?” Richie said, laughing. “Don’t worry, he was only in a desperate housing situation for like—three years?”

“That absolutely does not make me feel better, what the fuck,” Eddie said, picturing a twenty-something Richie alone somewhere in California, tending bar and wiping down tables while waiting for his big break. It made something in him twist with a misplaced nostalgia, missing a person he never knew.

“Nah, I was fine, after a year or two I fell in with this comedy group—s’where I met Sandy.” Idly, Eddie wondered if his stomach would ever be able to hear that name and behave normally, or if it would always drop to his knees.

“Oh,” he said, and then scrambled for something normal to say. “I didn’t realize you guys knew each other for that long.”

“Oh, I mean, we didn’t talk for a while, but we reconnected right before I started getting good bookings.” Richie laughed. “She likes to say she’s the whole reason I made it big, she’s such an asshole—you’re gonna love her.”

Eddie hummed, feeling queasy. “Yeah, well. Call me if you two are ever in New York,” Eddie said, wanting nothing less. “Listen, I—I have to go, I’ll talk to you later?”

“Oh,” Richie said, sounding a little confused. Of course he was, Eddie was acting like a freak. “No, yeah, sure. Call me anytime, Eds.”

“I have an actual job, so I won’t, but thanks,” Eddie said, and then tacked on, “and don’t call me Eds.”

After hanging up, Eddie buried his face in his hands, barely restraining himself from groaning aloud. Stupid, he was so fucking stupid, _this_ was so fucking stupid. Who fell back in love with their childhood crush? He was _forty_.

Giving into an urge he hadn’t let himself think much about, Eddie opened his phone again and pulled up Sandy’s Twitter. The most recent tweets were all promotion and thanks for her tour, and one of them included what looked like a poster with 4 women posing together. The one he assumed was Sandy based on the account’s profile picture was everything he hadn’t realized he was picturing. She had big curly dark blonde hair and light lipstick and she was winking at the camera in a way that used her whole face. She was very pretty, but worse than that, she looked funny—like she and Richie would fit. He scrolled to another picture, this time of both her and Richie, in a tweet that appeared to be celebrating Richie’s birthday.

 _happy birthday to this giant lug,_ the tweet read, _someday i’ll finally finish embezzling all of his ill-gotten gains, but for now cake i guess_

In the image, Richie and Sandy were pictured at what looked like a restaurant table, with Richie’s hands in the air like he was telling a story. Sandy was looking at him with her eyebrows raised and a half smile on her face, fond. They weren’t touching, but it was clear that they were easy around each other, comfortable. Eddie was going to walk into the sea.

He closed out of the app and tried not to feel too miserable. Then he gave in and called Mike.

“Hey, Eddie, what’s up?” Mike said.

“Hey, I—” Through the phone Eddie heard what sounded like a mass of people and overhead announcements. “Where are you?”

“O’Hare, I’m flying to California for a week before heading out to Hawaii,” Mike said. “It’s step one on my very detailed travel itinerary.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, man. Twenty-seven years is a long time, this is my—my light at the end of the tunnel, you know?” Mike said. Eddie felt instantly very guilty, thinking of Mike, alone in Derry, holding onto the hope that the six of them would someday return. Ben might have seen himself in the Odyssey, but Mike was the true Penelope—eyes on the horizon, weaving and unweaving a burial shroud. 

“Uh, yeah—Mike,” Eddie said, tripping over his words a little. “I’m so sorry, that you had to wait that long.”

“It’s okay Eddie,” Mike said, ever kind. “I’m just glad to have you all back. Why’re you calling? Everything okay?”

“Oh, yeah,” Eddie said automatically, then reconsidered. “Actually, you know what? No, it’s kind of not.”

“Anything I can help with?”

“Uh, not really,” Eddie said. “Just tell me you haven’t met the love of your life since I’ve seen you last?”

Mike laughed. “Can’t say I have.”

“Good. I mean, I obviously hope you do,” Eddie said, “but right now it’s nice to know—I don’t know—I’m not alone in being alone?”

“The divorce not going too well, then?”

“No—well, I mean, yes, that’s still a shitshow—but I was just,” Eddie said, and then stopped to think of how to phrase it so he looked the least pathetic. “Everyone _has_ someone, you know? Stan has Patty, Bill has Audra, Ben and Bev just found each other again, Richie has—I just feel like I’m the only one who’s starting from scratch.”

Mike hummed. “I get what you’re saying, but you’re not, Eddie, I swear,” Mike said. “I mean, I can’t account for everybody, but this is pretty damn near a new beginning in my life, too.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, feeling bitter and ashamed. 

“Bill, too, I mean,” Mike said, and then whistled under his breath. “He’s who I’m staying with in California—the first thing he said when I asked to visit was how nice it would be to have another person in the house who speaks to him. You’re not the only one with patching up to do, Eddie.”

Mike was right, of course. “You’re right.” Eddie sighed. “It’s weird, I just got all of you back, but I still feel…”

“Lonely?” Mike suggested.

“Yeah.”

“That’s okay,” Mike said, eerily reminiscent of Ben. “You can take as much time as you need to feel—like yourself. You’ve already taken some big steps in the right direction.”

“I know, I—I just want it to be easier.”

“It’ll get there. And, you have all of us, you can call me at any time, man.”

“Thanks, Mike,” Eddie said. He did feel a little better from when the conversation had started. Not completely fine, but soothed, maybe. “Now tell me about your trip, I promise I’ll try to keep from ruining it with shark attack statistics.”

***

A week or so later, his break at work coincided with Allison’s again.

“Hey,” she said, “remember my name yet?”

“Fuck off,” he said, then immediately regretted it. That was probably a fine response to a long-lost childhood friend who had seen him dive off a cliff in his underwear, but not his barely familiar coworker. “Uh—sorry. I don’t really know how to…talk to other people.”

Luckily, she just laughed and toasted him with her water bottle. “I’ll drink to that, man,” Allison said. “Speaking of—a couple of us are going to that new bar after work tomorrow, you wanna come? Don’t worry, Grant isn’t going to be there.”

“Who?” Eddie had no idea who that was or why he was supposed to be relieved he wouldn’t be coming.

Allison looked confused for a second, then snorted. “Oh, right, I forgot you don’t know his name.”

“Oh, that guy.” Eddie had been a bit off in his guesses, then.

“So you in?”

Eddie felt vaguely uncomfortable with the idea; Allison was obviously a few years younger than him and he felt somewhat like he wouldn’t be able to, he didn’t know, keep up. But, he reasoned, he was an adult. He could always just leave. “Yeah, sure. Why not?”

“Sweet, see you there.”

As that evening drew closer, Eddie felt a mix of dread and low-level excitement. As much as he loved the Losers, the idea of spending time with people whose histories were not so tightly entwined with his own was kind of nice.

When he arrived at the bar, Allison stood up and excitedly waved him over. She was wearing her hair down for once, falling over her shoulders. “Hey, Eddie! You came!” Allison said, then gestured towards the people she was sitting with. “This is James and Maria; they work in HR.”

The two people at the table, a skinny black man and woman with short, intensely curly hair, gave him a wave. 

“Hey,” Eddie said, sitting down. The uncomfortable feeling from before was back but abated a little with the half smile on James’ face. 

“Okay, I’m gonna go get a pitcher of something,” Allison said, pushing back from the table. “And it’s going to be cheap and disgusting.”

“So, Eddie, you work with Allison?” Maria said. When he nodded, she smiled in what looked like disbelief. “And you didn’t know her name until _when_?”

Eddie bit back a groan. “I’m—listen, I’m not good with names.”

“She’s worked here for a while, dude,” James said, joining in with a grin. 

“Okay, well, I—” Eddie said, then gave up. “Yeah, I’m kind of an asshole.”

Both laughed, and Eddie felt a stab of pride.

“Fuck, at least he’s upfront about it,” Maria said. “More than my last ex can say.”

“Oh, we talking exes?” James said. “Because I swear mine was out to fucking kill me.”

“Did they threaten to crash your car?” Maria said, shaking her head. “Craziest bitch I’ve ever met.” She sighed. “I think I was in love with her.”

Eddie had barely stopped himself from jolting at _her_ when James turned to him. “How about you, Eddie, any ex stories? Are you—oh, wait, you’re married, right?”

“Uh,” Eddie said. “No—well, I’m getting divorced. Right now. So.”

“Oh,” James said. “Uh…sorry?”

Eddie laughed at the look on his face. “No, no, you’re fine, I was the one who filed—it was a long time coming.”

Maria grimaced a bit. “Sucks, though,” she said, and Eddie tilted his head in agreement. “Have you gotten back out there at all?”

“Ah,” Eddie said. An unrequited love on your straight childhood friend didn’t really count, did it? One that made you ache from the inside out? “No—I mean, the reason I’m divorcing her is I, uh, recently came to terms with being gay.”

“Hey—congratulations!” Maria said, just as Allison got back to the table. 

“Who are we congratulating?”

“Eddie, he’s getting gay divorced,” Maria said, taking the pitcher and setting it on the table.

“I’m behind on my terminology—is that divorcing your gay spouse,” Allison asked, “or divorcing for gay reasons?”

“Guess.”

The conversation devolved from there and Eddie found it startlingly easy to talk to the group of them. He discovered that James had been working on fixing up an old motorcycle he’d inherited from his grandfather.

“Not that I’ll ever take it out on _these_ city streets,” he said, laughing, “but it’s a cool little machine.”

It was nice to talk mechanics with someone else who enjoyed it; Myra hadn’t been that interested and none of the Losers had quite the love for engines he did. Eddie liked the cause and effect of it all, he liked that you could rip one apart completely and then fix it back up.

Eventually, halfway drunk on some truly terrible beers and the company of people he hoped he could eventually call friends, Eddie headed home. He was waiting outside for his Uber when his phone lit up and Eddie swiped to answer without looking.

“Hey, I’m outside—”

“Eds?” Richie.

“Oh,” Eddie said, his tongue heavy in his mouth. “Hi.”

“No, now I’m curious,” Richie said. “Outside what?”

“A bar, I thought you were my Uber, asshole.”

“Oh I am, but there’s been a slight delay—I won’t be arriving for another 48 hours,” Richie said solemnly. “Please don’t take it out on my rating.”

“You wouldn’t last a fucking day in that job,” Eddie said, flagging down his actual Uber with a one-armed wave.

“Oh, not _now_ , I’m soft. But you underestimate the desperation of young Richie, he was the best service employee west of the Mississippi.”

“I don’t believe that for a second.”

“It’s true!” Richie said, laughing. Tipsy in the back of a stranger’s car, phone pressed to his ear with Richie’s warm voice on the other end, Eddie thought he might be the most comfortable he’d ever been in his life. He wanted to bask in it. “My philosophy in shitty part time jobs? Buy in completely. You are talking to the most avid supporter of the Best Buy brand from ’96 to ’97.”

“What happened in ’97?”

“Got fired for stealing a copy of _Grease 2_.”

Eddie laughed and kept laughing, longer than he probably would have sober. There was something about a twenty-one-year-old Richie that made him laugh almost as much as he wanted to cry.

“Oh,” Richie said quietly, for him anyway. “You liked that one, huh?”

“Fuck off, I’m drunk,” Eddie said once he’d settled down a bit. 

“You must be, if you’re laughing at my jokes.”

“Hey,” Eddie said, suddenly far from laughing. “I laugh at your fucking jokes. I think you’re funny, you’ve gotta know that, Rich.”

“Oh, Eds, you must be _toasted_ ,” Richie said, sounding fond. “Don’t say anything you’ll regret.”

Eddie frowned, thinking of all the times in childhood he’d spent entire days with Richie, laughing so much his stomach would hurt for days afterwards. He had liked that feeling, the sensation of being so happy it left an ache behind. He did still.

“I think you’re funny,” Eddie said again, slowing down to make sure he wasn’t slurring. “I mean, not when you’re doing that performative bullshit you do onstage, but when you’re just—being Richie. You’re funny.”

There was silence for a second, long enough for Eddie to get very anxious and start to think of how he could backtrack. “I mean—”

“Thanks, Eds,” Richie said, and his voice sounded—strange. “I, uh. Thank you.”

Eddie groaned. “That was weird, right? Sorry—I really am kind of drunk.”

Richie laughed, but it still sounded a little off. “No, no. Far be it from me to stop you from complimenting me—in fact, you should sing my praises more, Eds. I don’t think they got it in the cheap seats.”

“Write something yourself and maybe I will.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” As he said it, it felt like a challenge. The performances he’d seen of Richie’s comedy had left a bad taste in his mouth, like the time he’d accidentally chewed on his multivitamin—bitter and metallic and something in his brain saying that it was wrong.

“Maybe I will,” Richie said. 

“You’re fucking exhausting,” Eddie said, and it came out a little slurred. “I can’t believe I—” _want to kiss you so bad, wish you were here, love you, love you, love you like my heart is beating with it,_ “—have to put up with you.”

“Love you too, buddy,” Richie said, and the nonchalance of it hit Eddie’s chest dead center. “Hey, did Bev tell you about the model she had to deal with the other day?”

The rest of the car ride was spent in a pleasant haze, Richie in his ear recounting some story that had originated with Bev, and then one from Ben that included less angry models and more ancient barkeeps. Eddie was more than happy to hum along as Richie took him through it, talented as ever at turning a nothing anecdote into something that was truly entertaining.

By the time he got to the end, Eddie was in his own bed, drifting slightly. 

“—and no, fucking somehow, the night did _not_ end with Ricky Lee fucking rounding up the two horses that stand in for law enforcement in that town,” Richie said.

Eddie hummed, not really having the facilities to drum up another response.

“Eds?” Richie’s voice sounded soft again, like Eddie could sink into it. “Oh, shit, you’re probably falling asleep. What is it, like midnight over there?”

“Closer to one,” Eddie said in a voice that even he could tell was sleep mumbly. 

“I’ll let your crazy Friday night come to a close, then,” Richie said. “Can’t have you sleeping on the incredibly important job I still don’t understand the point of.”

“Asshole.”

“That’s what they call me.”

There was a silence, filled by nothing but his and Richie’s breathing. Eddie knew he should probably hang up, but he was tired and drunk and the in and out of Richie’s breath scratched some itch deep under his skin. He was falling asleep in earnest when he finally heard Richie speak again.

“Night, Eds.” It felt unbearably gentle. 

The call disconnected and Eddie blindly set his phone down on the nightstand in his darkened room. With a herculean effort, he rolled off his bed and began getting ready to actually fall asleep. As he was getting out his pajamas, he paused. Scrunched up on the top of his dresser, the shirt he had worn months ago in Derry slumped, halfway to falling to the floor.

When he had unpacked his luggage those weeks ago, Eddie hadn’t quite had the nerve to wash it. It was objectively disgusting, but that weird little in between night in Derry occupied a not insignificant portion of his mind and he hadn’t wanted to do anything to erase the remnants of it.

Without thinking about it too much, Eddie turned out the bathroom lights and threw the shirt over his head. It was still annoyingly soft.

As his mind truly settled into sleep, he realized Richie hadn’t said why he’d called.

***

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

“It’s true!” Mike said, laughing. “The instructor said I was a natural.”

“No one stands up on their first time on surfboard,” Eddie said, turning his oven light on and peering in on his frozen lasagna. “Farm know-how cannot translate to the sea.”

“Apparently it does,” Mike said. “Also, your shark talk had me so nervous every time my limbs were hanging off the board, so thanks for that, man.”

“You’re welcome, you seal-looking motherfucker.”

Mike laughed. “Man, I knew, objectively, there had to be places better than Derry, but I had no idea how good it could get,” he said. “Don’t start apologizing again.” Eddie closed his mouth.

“How was your week with Bill?” he asked instead.

“Ah,” Mike said. “Well, Audra was perfectly pleasant—to me.”

“Yikes.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t—I mean, not the most comfortable setting. But I think he meant it when he said he was gonna work on it, you know?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, thinking of the times he and Myra had “worked” on their marriage. For Bill’s sake, he hoped his plan was more effective than theirs had been. “Do you think he’s—told her anything yet?”

Mike hummed. “I don’t know. Seeing as she was still angry and not confused or afraid, probably not.”

“That’s, uh, kind of a hurdle,” Eddie said, once again thankful that he wouldn’t have to have anything approaching this conversation with Myra.

“Yeah. I offered to stick around if he wanted support, but I think he wants to rip the band aid off alone,” Mike said. “I said he should call you.”

“Me?” Eddie said, a little shocked. “Mike, why? What advice could I possibly have for Bill? I don’t think he can go the route of ‘tell her you’re gay and get a divorce.’”

“I don’t know,” Mike said thoughtfully, “but it seems like, out of all of us, you’re the one who’s bouncing back the hardest.”

Eddie felt something like pride glow in his chest for a second before he shut it down. “Mike, that’s—thank you, I guess, but the only reason it seems like that is that I’m the only one who needed to change anything about their life.”

“After visiting Bill, I can tell you that that is definitely not the case,” Mike said. “And Bev—she’s going through one hell of a divorce right now. Don’t sell yourself short, Eddie, we all have our baggage—and you’re confronting yours.”

Eddie was definitely blushing now, laid a bit low by Mike’s praise. “Well,” he started. “I—I have a lot more to do, I mean, I haven’t even really _thought_ about therapy, or doctor’s appointments, Mike, I can’t even _cook_ for myself.”

“Hey,” Mike said. “Don’t worry about that. You have to look at it in achievable steps or you’re going to want to have an anxiety attack. How’s that going, by the way—you still use your inhaler?”

“I, uh.” Eddie briefly considered lying but thought better of it. It was Mike. “Yeah, sometimes. I know it’s not—it’s not good for me. But.”

“That’s alright, we all have things it’s hard to let go of, I mean,” Mike said, “I don’t think anyone really lost the token they threw into the fire. It doesn’t help that you lost all of your progress for thirty years. That considered, I think you’re doing a pretty good job so far.”

Despite himself, Eddie felt comforted. “Why the fuck are you so good at this, Mike?”

“Lots of time in a library, you eventually get around to the self-help books,” Mike laughed. “And as for the cooking thing, why not?”

“I don’t—I think I’ve always been kind of afraid of food,” Eddie said, and it felt like he was confessing something. Maybe he was. “It’s hard to balance in my head. I feel like if I’m enjoying something I—it can’t be good for me, you know? And I mean, there’s a lot of food that isn’t.”

“Hm,” Mike said. “Given your, uh, history, that makes a sort of sense. If you want any tips, though, I’ve been cooking for one for quite a while now.”

“Thanks, Mike,” Eddie said. “I’m sorry that every time we talk it turns into—this.”

“You’re alright. You should probably look into that therapist thing eventually though; no amount of Derry Public Library reading can make up for an actual degree. Before that, is there anything else you wanted to talk about?”

He could, probably, tell Mike about Richie. Eddie could imagine his response—kind, understanding. Maybe a little incredulous, but Eddie wouldn’t blame him. Maybe someday he would. Not quite yet, though.

“Nothing more important than whatever’s next for your vacation. Has Stan asked for bird pictures yet?”

***

Fielding calls from Myra had gotten easier after most of their communication shifted to being handled by lawyers, if only because she had to acknowledge he was serious. He had actually almost gone a full week without any calls or texts when his phone dinged.

**_Can we talk?_ **

The simplicity and briefness of it startled Eddie. Above the single line of it were several paragraph long texts that ranged from asking Eddie to come back and let them resume their life to angrily pointing out that it wasn’t right that he leave her with such little explanation. The latter ones made him feel somewhat guilty—Myra hadn’t exactly signed up for this when she married a junior risk analyst with an anxiety disorder, and he was giving her very little to work with. He didn’t want to imagine the current scenario from her perspective.

Eddie let the message sit in his phone for a few days, unsure of exactly what to do. He knew he could turn to the other Losers for advice but bringing in such biased sources didn’t feel fair to Myra.

Eventually, he texted back.

_I don’t know if that’s the best idea._

The response was almost immediate.

**_Eddie, please. I just need some closure._ **

He hesitated. That was fair, but it could also just be a ploy to get him back on the phone. Eddie was getting better at setting boundaries for himself, but he didn’t know if he could trust himself with this situation. He was about to say something about talking to her with their lawyers present when her next text came in.

**_I wanted to apologize._ **

Eddie stared at his phone. That was—new. Before he quite knew what he was doing, he was calling her.

“Eddie?”

“Myra, apologize? For _what_?”

“I was—I was rude to you, earlier,” Myra said. “When you…”

After a second, Eddie realized she was trying to bring up him coming out. “Oh. I—it’s alright, Myra.” Eddie wasn’t quite sure if that was true, but he felt like he should say it.

“I was shocked and—and angry,” she said. “And I don’t think that was unreasonable, I mean _really_ , Eddie, you go missing for days and come home injured? And bring up divorce for the first time since I’ve known you? I thought you had a _head_ injury.”

“That’s…that’s fair.”

“But it wasn’t…right of me to shrug you off like that. So. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too,” Eddie said, a little lost at sea. This was an abandonment of every script they had, but that was probably for the best. Maybe he should have come out years ago. No, he definitely should have. “Myra, I am so sorry. But I couldn’t, I can’t, keep going on like we were. You understand that, right?”

“I think,” she said, and her voice sounded a bit choked up, “I think I’m coming to. But Eddie, I don’t _want_ to, I _liked_ our life. I don’t understand why you have to make this change _now_.”

Explaining would be easier if Eddie could expound upon the memory bullshit, but he did the best he could. “When I almost died, in Maine, I reconsidered a lot of things. One of them was—I wasn’t happy. And there were a lot of reasons for that, I’m not blaming you for anything.”

“But,” Myra said, and she was almost definitely crying now, “I was part of it.”

“No—well.” Eddie was really regretting calling now, but she did deserve a little justification. “Myra, I was unhappy because of me, the choices _I_ made. I didn’t—I wasn’t acknowledging what would actually make me happy, I didn’t want to. And I’m sorry, that I involved you in my mistakes.”

“Oh, Eddie,” Myra said, letting out a shuddery breath. “I just want it to all go back to normal.”

“I know. But it can’t.”

“I—I know,” she said. “But do you think…we’ve spent twelve years together; I don’t want to stop seeing you.”

“Myra—”

“I know, you—you don’t want to be married to me. But could we—could I talk to you?”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Eddie said. “But I, I’ll think about it.”

“Okay,” Myra said. She sniffed. “I’m not trying to make you miserable, Eddie, I’m not. It’s just so…it’s hard to be alone, all of a sudden.”

Eddie understood, perhaps a little too well. He hadn’t lived alone since before he met Myra, for a brief stint after college before his mother’s failing health forced him to move back in with her. Now, in his empty apartment, it sometimes felt a little like he was the only person in the world. Having the Losers helped, a bit, but his lingering jealousy of their happy unions left Eddie a little hesitant to reach out. He was getting better at it, though, being alone, in what he hoped was a healthy way. He thought it was, probably. Healthier than any patterns he’d had before this point.

After ending the call with Myra, Eddie sat in the quiet of his apartment and felt the curls of something like contentment in his gut. He still had several steps to go, but he was moving now.

***

He was eating lunch when Beverly called.

“Hey!”

“Eddie, hi!” she said. She sounded happy. “I just wanted to check in! This divorce shit really is some—well, shit, huh?”

Eddie laughed. “No fucking kidding,” he said. “Are you doing okay?”

Bev hummed. “More okay than I expected to be, you know? It’s…weird,” she said. “To remember everything all at once. It’s like waking up, but you’re still in the bad dream—you have to fight your way out of it.”

“And it’s fucking exhausting.” It was comforting, to hear her say something that had been tumbling around in his head since July.

“Exactly! The only time in my life I’ve been more tired is when I was in college waitressing double shifts,” she said. “If I ever reach that point, I’m going to take Ben and his amazingly impractical boat and just—head out for international waters.”

“If you have the extra room—”

“We’ll park in a canal outside your place and lay on the horn,” Bev said, smile in her voice. “Don’t worry.”

“You’d better,” Eddie said, grinning himself. There was something about talking to Beverly that was so easy, but he got the feeling that it was less from their shared childhood and more because of the people they had grown to be.

“Anyway, enough about me, how are you doing? Can you risk analyze your way out of this one?”

“Hey, fuck you,” Eddie said. “No, it’s—it’s going okay, I think. She’s being…way better about this than she could be. Way better than I deserve, honestly.”

“Hey, Eddie,” Bev said. “Don’t say that.”

Bev being comforting was actually making him feel worse, but he didn’t want to dive into the intricacies of his relationship with Myra in the company break room. “Sorry, sorry. How’s Ben?” Eddie asked, a blatant ploy at a subject change. 

Beverly, the saint, allowed it. “Oh, you know. He’s Ben—intensely earnest, with eyes that can fuckin’ strip you to your core.” Eddie laughed. “No, he’s good, we’re good. Really good.”

“I’m happy to hear it,” Eddie said, and he meant it. There was still a pang of jealousy in his stomach, but it was quashed by the wave of affection he felt towards Bev and Ben. “Now get it out of my face and let me be lonely in fucking peace.”

“Oh, come on Eddie, you can—get back out there!” Bev’s voice sounded like she was smiling. Eddie understood—he hadn’t considered himself a smiling sort of person until going back to Derry and now his cheeks hurt all the goddamn time. “You’re a catch, any guy would be lucky to have you.”

“Uh, thanks.”

“Are you on any apps or anything? I’m not living in New York anymore, but I could definitely hook you up with someone if you want—fair warning though,” Bev said, “they _will_ be in the modeling industry. I understand if that’s a dealbreaker.”

Eddie’s face was burning. “Uh,” he said again. “I—I don’t know.”

“Well, hey, if you ever change your mind about it, let me know. Ooh, actually, I might know someone _perfect_ —”

“Okay, well, it was nice to talk to you,” Eddie said, rushing the words out, “but my break’s over, I gotta go!” He hung up on her laughter.

It wasn’t that he was entirely averse to dating it was just—it felt like a sloppy conclusion to the story. He had fought his mother, his past, an _evil space entity_ just to date some guy who made the first move on a dating app? It didn’t feel right, it wasn’t what Eddie wanted—not that he could ever really have that.

He sighed. It felt melodramatic. All things considered, he was very lucky. He could be dead in a cavern under Derry—or worse, he could still be asleep in New York. Maybe dating someone other than the person he’d been in love with since childhood wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

Later, when Allison brought up a single friend of James’, Eddie didn’t say no.

*** 

Another thing on Eddie’s take-back-your-life list (he could hear Richie laughing at him for using that phrase unironically, but, well. He was, wasn’t he?) was simply _run_ with a single question mark by it. 

Eddie had vague memories of doctor’s notes and missed PE classes and, deeper than that, the desire to _go._ Not just to physically run, but maybe that would have helped. He remembered watching the old lumbering trains on the outskirts of Derry with not a little jealousy. Old iron and steel heading steadily past the edges of town, somewhere Eddie had felt like he would maybe never reach. He had though. Eventually. Maybe not in the triumphant way he’d hoped, but he was out of Derry now, for good. 

As much as the itch under his skin had been about leaving his suffocating childhood and not looking back, it was also related to how something in his body wanted to take the pent-up energy from his unexplored neuroses and put it somewhere. Namely, into running as fast as he possibly could. Eddie couldn’t remember exactly how it physically felt to push himself like that, but he could remember the relief of it.

So. _Run._

He thought about calling Ben for advice—hadn’t he said something about running in high school? College?—but ultimately decided against it. If he was going to use this to save himself, Eddie wanted to figure it out on his own. 

Which meant a lot of googling. 

He had to stop himself from buying calf compressors and some heartbeat monitoring watch, but he did get a running belt for his phone. And new earbuds.

The streets of NYC were too harrowing for Eddie to even consider running on, but Central Park seemed like a decent enough place to start. People ran there, right? He hoped so. If he arrived and didn’t see anyone running, he was going to head right back home.

Luckily, seconds after his arrival, a woman jogged by pushing a stroller containing what was either a large pit bull or a very ugly human child. He shook his head, trying not to smile in public. It was New York, no one was going to look twice at him, some dude.

Running itself, for all the negative media coverage, was not that bad. Eddie was already in decent shape—a lifetime of carefully monitored eating and gym memberships had made certain of that—and halfway through his first lap around the burn in his lungs hadn’t reached anything painful. The thing about running, he was realizing, was that you just kind of had to keep doing it. There really wasn’t a trick to it, it was just movement. Although, Eddie supposed his form could probably be better.

At the end of the first lap, Eddie’s legs ached satisfyingly. He walked a cool-down lap, mindful of the horror stories he had read the night before about pulled muscles and ruptured ligaments. It was a little boring, and he made a mental note to ask the group chat for music recommendations later.

The sun peaked through the grey clouds weakly, and Eddie suddenly felt a great affection for the park, New York, even himself to some extent. _I am here, I am here, and I am happy, even if it’s just for this second._ He struggled for a moment with what he was sure looked like a completely crazed grin before letting it break fully across his face. There was something satisfying in that, too.

***

Cooking for himself turned out to not be the trial he had thought. The website that Mike had texted him a link to was neat and easy to look at, with a filtering system that Eddie tried to only use for taste and not to adhere to any allergies he may or may not have had. He mostly succeeded. 

He was shopping for ingredients for an incredibly complicated lentil salad when Richie called again.

Eddie felt a little guilty for the fact that he had so rarely initiated a conversation with Richie in the months following Derry, but he simply couldn’t bring himself to. He was going to wallow in the fact that Richie was reaching out to him first until he stopped doing it—in fact, he waited until the fourth ring before picking up.

“What do you want?”

“Well hello to you too, my darling Eds.” Richie’s voice was—Richie’s voice. Eddie wanted to hear it more than any other sound in the world and he wouldn’t admit that upon pain of death. “Whatcha doing?”

“Grocery shopping—do you know what the hell Castelvetrano olives are?”

“Uh, can’t say that I do, or anyone does,” Richie said. “Just buy the black ones in the can—put ‘em on your fingers.”

“Gross, I will _not_.” Eddie was kind of giving up on the olives altogether. He’d never liked them much anyway and the salt content made him shudder.

“But the brine is so good, man. And—free electrolytes.”

“You _drink_ that shit? You’re going to die of hypertension complications at a shockingly young age, Rich.”

“We fought a demon clown from space, we’re invincible, stupid,” Richie said. “Anyway, enough about your incredibly boring Whole Foods trip—how roomy is that New York apartment?”

“Why?” Eddie said, suspicious. “And how did you know I was at Whole Foods.”

“Eds, anyone who looks at you immediately knows you have an Amazon Prime membership.” Something in Richie’s voice was making him itch—it was entirely too fond.

“Don’t call me Eds.”

“Sure thing, Spaghetti. Anyway, as I was saying before you so rudely interrupted, you got room at your place? I’ve got this meeting in New York that Steve’s making me attend in person.” Richie made a fart noise into the receiver.

“Oh.” Eddie stood still for a second, trying to reconcile the idea of Richie in his one bedroom. It was breaking his brain a little bit. “Uh, yeah, probably.”

“Don’t sound too enthusiastic there,” Richie said. “If it’s a problem, I could get a hotel somewhere, no sweat.”

“No!” Eddie said too quickly. “I mean, why get a hotel when you can sleep in my hall on an air mattress?”

Richie laughed. “More than I was expecting—remember all those nights I used to crash on your bedroom floor in that old fuckin’ sleeping bag? Anything’s better than that, your carpet was _so_ threadbare, man.”

“Fuck off, I wasn’t _making_ you crawl through my window, you had a perfectly good four poster of your own,” Eddie said, blushing. “Why’d you stop doing that, anyway?”

“We got to old, you moved away, who knows,” Richie hummed. “Who knows why I started doing it in the first place.”

Eddie felt raw. Those nights were always intensely stressful—sneaking Richie in the window and out again early in the morning, scared at any moment that his mom might hear something and send Richie away, maybe forever—but they were also some of the best of his newly remembered childhood. Something about the sleepy tone Richie’s voice took on real late at night and the way he was only an arm’s length away set Eddie at peace deep, deep down.

“I always slept better when you did,” Eddie said, feeling like he was holding his bare heart in his hands, free of the protective cage of his ribs, and offering it to Richie. 

“Yeah,” Richie said. “Me too.”

In the quiet that followed, Eddie was gripped with the crazy urge to just spit it all out, the embarrassing length of it, just so he wouldn’t have to sit and listen to Richie’s breath. He didn’t.

“Anyway,” Richie said, clearing his throat, “I’ll be in town on the fifteenth? Does that work?”

Eddie did the mental math—the fifteenth was a Friday. “You staying the whole weekend, then?”

“If you’ll have me!” His cadence was jokey.

“Fuck off, of course I will,” Eddie said. He hoped both that he wasn’t being too obvious, and that Richie could read into what he was really saying, which was _anything you want, I’ll do anything you want._

After ending the call, Eddie walked through the freezer section in a loop, trying to cool down his face. Richie was going to be here. Here, in New York, with Eddie. His tongue felt salty with excitement, the way it hadn’t for almost thirty years. 

He had to go buy an air mattress.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this isn't the last chapter I just remembered it's been like a month since I posted but also I'm not done writing so here's.....something

Seeing Richie in his apartment felt like a computer error. The bright yellow pattern of his shirt seemed to suck out any color that was left in Eddie’s tastefully off-white walls and the way he slung his duffel bag on the couch said he was more comfortable here in twenty seconds than Eddie had managed to get in months.

“So!” Richie clapped his hands together and the sound bounced around the room. “What _is_ there to do in this podunk town?”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “First, make sure you get to your meeting on time tomorrow. You need a ride or anything?”

“Oh, nah, I’ll just take the tube.” He pronounced the last word with a solid _ch-_ sound—chewb. His smirk said he was waiting for Eddie to comment on it, so he didn’t.

“If you change your mind—which you should, those cars are filthy—let me know. I’d say you could take my car yourself, but we both know I’d be lying.”

“Oh, I’m not good enough for your baby, Eddie baby?” Richie said, smirk only getting worse.

Eddie tried not to visibly react at the use of baby on either side of his name. Success felt minimal. “When have I ever called it my baby, you asshole? It’s just my car.”

“Sure,” Richie said, stretching out the vowel. “You’re telling me you didn’t fix it up yourself? Tenderly stroke the, what, the lug nuts? Pop open the hood and whisper sweetly to the carburetor?”

“You only know that’s part of an engine because it has the word car in it,” Eddie said, giving into his losing fight with a smile.

“Maybe!”

They stood there, just grinning at each other over Eddie’s pale blue couch, until he couldn’t quite take it anymore.

“Well,” Eddie said, clearing his throat, “bathroom’s over there. Closet, kitchen, my room. TV. Thanks for coming on the grand tour.”

“Am I supposed to be sleeping on this couch? Because, well,” Richie said, gesturing to himself and then the five-foot-long-at-most loveseat. “I’d hate to give the clown the satisfaction of dying from like, a slipped disc or something.”

“I told you, I have a fucking air mattress,” Eddie said. “The tall version cost me ten bucks more, so don’t say I never gave you shit.”

“You actually bought me an air mattress?” Something in Richie’s voice made Eddie turn around from where he was getting it off of the closet shelf. There was a weird expression on Richie’s face and Eddie felt his eyebrows draw together.

“Well, yeah. Where else were you gonna sleep? The floor? My bed?” The expression got stranger. Right. “Hey, you know you don’t _have_ to stay here right?”

“What?” Richie looked a little struck. “No, I want to. Wait, do _you_ want me to?”

“Yes!” It felt very loud. A confession, just not quite the right one.

“Then why are we even talking about it? I’m here.”

“I just,” Eddie started, then stopped. “Never mind. You’re here.” Rather than elaborate, he tossed the rolled up mattress to Richie, who let out a sound upon catching it.

“Why do they make these things so fucking heavy?” He let it fall to the ground with a muffled thump. “And I’m supposed to blow this up? With _my_ lungs?”

“There’s a switch on the side, dumbass.”

“Ah!” Suddenly, the horrible noise of an air mattress automatically inflating filled the apartment as the lump of plastic started to take shape. Richie looked down at the mattress, up at Eddie, down at the mattress, back up at Eddie. He smiled and shoved his hands in his pockets. “So,” he half-shouted, “come here often?”

“I’m not shouting at you over the sound of that thing, dude.”

“What?”

“I said, I’m not _shouting_ —” He cut himself off. “Fuck you!”

Richie cackled in a little kid kind of way, his head thrown back and face scrunched up. It wasn’t a very flattering look, but that didn’t really matter to Eddie, whose heart thumped painfully. Or maybe it was just a heart attack? He hadn’t been taking his meds—were statins one of them? He locked eyes with Richie again, who looked incredibly fond in a way he would probably never use words to express. Which was good, because then Eddie really might have a myocardial infarction and keel over, dead.

“Keep this shit up and I’m getting you fucking zoodles,” Eddie said, opening the drawer where he kept his takeout menus.

“How is that a threat, I fucking love zoodles, dude, sorry—zude,” Richie said, sitting down on the couch but still facing Eddie in the kitchen. “And my mom would thank you, she’s fully bought into the part of my image that screams ‘has gone dumpster diving for a half finished bag of takis.’”

“Tell me you haven’t.”

Richie just smiled enigmatically from where his head was perched on his arms over the couch back.

Eddie reached over and flicked him on the forehead with his middle finger, a poor replacement for what he wanted to do and had done in childhood. Namely, tackle Richie to the ground, or dunk his whole head underwater until he was spluttering and elbowing and the ravenous thing inside Eddie could lie back down. The thing that got up and paced whenever their rhythms got too snappy, whenever Richie looked too directly at him with the half smile that expected a response—one that Eddie usually gave.

“Ow, what the fuck?” Richie said, but he was laughing.

“Stop trying to gross me out and tell me what you want to order, dumbass.”

They settled on a Greek place.

“Man,” Richie said, dumping the contents of a little lidded container full of tzatziki sauce all over the rest of his food. “I feel like When Harry Met Sally whenever I get one of these, you know?” He shook the empty container. “You know, ‘chef’s salad, dressing on the side.’”

“Like—who?”

“Did you never see that movie?” Richie said, grabbing his phone and unlocking it. “It came out—yeah, 1989. Shitty year for us, but a _great_ one for movies. Billy Crystal? Meg Ryan? None of this rings a bell?”

It did sound vaguely familiar, now that Richie said it. “Did we go to see it?”

“Oh, as kids? No way, it was way too much of a romcom to even pop up on our radar, I bet.” Richie hummed. “I watched it a couple years ago—wanted to see if it lived up to the hype.”

“This is literally the first time I’m hearing about any hype,” Eddie said. “It can’t have been that great.”

“Well, somebody’s obviously not in show business,” Richie said, nose tilted up in the air. “But no, it’s good, I think it—” He stopped.

“What?” Eddie asked when Richie failed to continue.

“Nothing, I just,” Richie said, huffing out a laugh. He waved one hand. “It’s nothing.”

“You’re an asshole when you try to be mysterious,” Eddie said, but he felt uneasy the way he always did when he sensed there was a joke he wasn’t getting. “Should we watch it, then?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, if you want to—or not, if you have to wake up early for uh, work?” Richie said. There was a note of avoidance in his voice.

“Richie. It’s eight thirty, what time do you think I go to sleep?”

“Why would I think about that? Or, I mean, know that, or,” Richie said, then groaned, running a hand over his face. “Sorry, I don’t—it’s been a long fucking day, man.”

Eddie looked at him for a second. “You’re being weird.”

“Sure am, Eds Spagheds,” Richie said, and offered no further explanation.

“I know you’re trying to distract me with that nickname, which still sucks, by the way,” Eddie said, unable to keep from anxiously gesturing. “But you’d better tell me if this is a bizarre symptom to something bigger, alright? Like, if there’s something bothering you.” They’d never been overly cautious with each other before, Eddie saw no reason to start now.

“Yeah, I will,” Richie said, but the way he wasn’t looking at Eddie when he said it made it feel like a lie. “Anyway, movie?”

Richie had been right, it was a good movie. That fact didn’t stop Eddie from glaring at him during the first diner scene.

“What?” Richie asked, clearly trying not to grin outright.

“You know what.”

Richie laughed aloud, tilting his head back on the couch. “No idea what you’re talking about, Eddie baby.”

Eddie scowled deeper. If this was all just an attempt to compare Eddie to Meg Ryan, he was going to turn off the TV and lock Richie out of the apartment. It didn’t help that Harry’s character didn’t _not_ make him think of Richie. Eddie paused it on a close up of Billy Crystal in the passenger seat.

“You can’t tell me you didn’t have hair like that at some point.”

“At some point? Eddie, that’s my hair _now_ ,” Richie said, fluffing some of his own hair up and pushing it down on his forehead. “See? Billy was fucking 40 when they made this, his hairline was as bad as mine.”

“40? And they had him play a college student?” Eddie looked back at the screen. Sure, he looked a little older than smooth-faced Meg Ryan, but 40?

Maybe 40 wasn’t as old as he thought.

By the end of the movie, Eddie felt—he didn’t know. _When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible_? Who said shit like that? He should sue. He didn’t want to look over at Richie, who knew what was visible right now in Eddie’s eyes.

Richie sniffed and Eddie promptly forget about not looking.

“Are you—are you _crying_ , dude?” As soon as it was out of his mouth, Eddie felt a little bad about the tone of it. Crying was something people did, even, Eddie supposed, in front of other people. It was just that the last person he’d seen do so was Myra, and he couldn’t imagine a more different person from her than Richie. “Sorry, sorry, I’m an asshole.”

“Nah, you’re good,” Richie said, pushing his hands up under his glasses to wipe at his eyes. “I’m kind of always like this.”

“Crying at movies?”

“Crying at anything, man,” Richie said with a small laugh. “I was listening to fucking Bobby Jean the other day—it was like turning on a garden hose.”

“The Springsteen song?” Eddie asked, concerned. This might be a problem bigger than he alone could deal with. Maybe he should call someone—Stan was usually good at dealing with whatever Richie threw at him. “Are you—don’t bullshit me, that doesn’t sound, _you_ don’t sound okay.”

“Are any of us okay, Eddie?” Richie wasn’t meeting his eyes. “Are you okay? Honestly?”

“Don’t dodge the fucking question,” Eddie said, scowling at the side of his face. “But, you know what? I am. I am okay.” It felt true. “I’m more okay than you, at least.”

Richie laughed again, sounding more normal now. “Well, good for you, man. One of us should be.”

“Richie, what the fuck is going on?” Eddie felt a little desperate. He didn’t really remember seeing Richie cry before this, not even when they were being ripped to shreds in Derry thirty years ago. Even when Eddie had left town unceremoniously a few months after that, Richie hadn’t done anything so embarrassing as _cry._ “Is something seriously wrong? Are you fucking dying?” As soon as he said it, Eddie was struck with real fear. It seemed like such a bullshit idea, that _now_ Richie should waste away, but the thought of it still made his throat hurt.

“I’m not fucking dying,” Richie said, smiling and finally looking Eddie in the eye. Something he saw there made him pause, smile fading. “Hey, really, I’m fine. I’m just an asshole, you knew that already.” He sighed. “Listen, I’m sorry to have a breakdown in your living room and then kick you out, but would you mind if I hit the sack? I might not be dying, but I think that flight gave me permanent leg cramps.”

It was a dismissal, it was an avoidance, it made Eddie want to fucking scream.

“Sure.” He knew it came out clipped and kind of bitchy, but he didn’t really have it in him to feel guilty about it.

Brushing his teeth in the bathroom, careful to avoid his mostly-healed cheek wound, Eddie tried not to glare at his reflection. He was trying to move away from glaring as his base expression at all, but he’d seen too many baby pictures with his eyebrows scrunched up to have much hope of that.

It was just…frustrating, to have Richie _here_ , but clearly occupied by something else. Something he wouldn’t tell Eddie about. Something that was making him _sad_ , and it hurt, a little, that he wouldn’t trust Eddie with it. Maybe Eddie wasn’t being fair. It’d only been about six short months since the most traumatic night of their lives, maybe he just needed to give Richie a second to—be traumatized. Eddie needed to ask him if he was going to therapy.

Back in the main living area, Richie was struggling to pull the fitted sheet over the air mattress. His back was to Eddie, shirt stretching across his shoulder blades. His sweatpants looked soft where they fit to the curve of his ass as he knelt on the mattress. Eddie swallowed on a dry throat.

“Need any help?” It came out relatively unaffected, thank god.

Richie’s head popped up and around and he grinned toothily. “Am I that obvious?” he asked, looking back down at where his hands grappled with the sheet. “Yeah, come over here and glare it into submission before this becomes the most strenuous thing I’ve done on a bed in years.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Eddie said, grabbing one end.

“Not quite what I was talking about, but getting warmer. Wanna—ah, there we go—buy a vowel?”

The sheet on, Eddie faced the horrible prospect of attempting a graceful exit. The weird energy from earlier hadn’t quite left the air and Eddie wasn’t quite sure what steps needed to be taken to make sure it did.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to be a dick earlier.” The words came from Richie, who was rubbing at the back of his neck. “Sorry. I’m not trying to be cryptic, or weird, but there’s some stuff I need to like…think about on my own before I talk to anyone about it, you know?”

Eddie nodded, once. He turned to go back to his room, then spun back on one heel. “Hey, that’s bullshit?”

“Excuse me?” Richie had actually put a hand against his chest, fingers splayed.

“You’re not going to talk about it with me, any of us, do you think I’m stupid?” Eddie said, getting kind of angry about it now. “You’re going to fucking—bottle it up, I know you will. Richie, we’re not thirteen anymore, you don’t have to keep this shit to yourself.”

“Eddie—” Richie started, looking startled and—something else.

“Don’t try to brush me off, you asshole. I know you’re going to, I know you’re trying to cover it up and handle it on your own and that’s _stupid_ Rich, it really is.”

Richie stared at him, mouth open a little. Then he laughed, a little wryly, shaking his head. “Fucking—I can’t keep _shit_ from you, huh?” He sat back down on the couch with his elbows on his knees and sighed. “Before you get all,” he said, gesturing with one hand, “I’m fine—I am, I’m actually probably the most fine I’ve ever been in my life.”

“Fine is kind of depressing, Richie,” Eddie said, torn between sitting beside him on the couch and standing stock still. He compromised by stepping a little closer and crossing his arms.

“Fine is fine, Eds,” Richie said, looking like he was on the cusp of rolling his eyes. “It’s just—a lot, remembering. Weird how much shit changes if you erase a couple months from when you’re thirteen, huh?”

“Bev says it’s like waking up,” Eddie said, “but life is still a nightmare. Speaking of—are you…?”

“Oh, are you referring to these?” Richie said, pulling his under-eye bags down with his two middle fingers. “Listen, do you think I wanna look like I’m pushing sixty? If I could sleep, I would. I keep having these—nightmares. Fuck, I feel like such a kid saying that.”

“I know,” Eddie said before he could help it. “In Derry, that night. You were—”

“Oh god.” Richie’s confused expression had morphed into something horrified. “I woke you up? Fuck, what did I say?”

Eddie was a bit surprised by the force of Richie’s embarrassment. “Nothing,” he lied. It was selfish and weird, but Eddie didn’t want to expose that night to the possibility of Richie making a joke out of it. “Why, what were you dreaming about?”

“I don’t remember,” Richie said, looking down. A lie.

“Well,” Eddie said after the ensuing silence stretched on for too long. “Okay. This is the shit you should be talking to someone about, I think.”

“Yeah.”

“It doesn’t have to be me, Ben’s weirdly good at the reassurance thing, or Mike, or, like, your girlfriend—”

“You bring her up a lot.”

Eddie tried not to freeze in place. “Well,” he said slowly, “she’s—do you want me to _not_ bring her up? Am I supposed to be reading your mind and know that’s somehow taboo? She’s your girlfriend, dude.”

“Maybe not for long, if shit keeps happening like it has been,” Richie said, rubbing a hand over his face.

Eddie felt pleased, then very guilty, then slightly pleased again. “Oh,” he said. “Are you—is everything okay?”

“I don’t know, Eds, what would you do if _your_ boyfriend came back from having a public meltdown with even more stress induced vomiting than before? And—oops, sorry babe,” Richie said, assuming an over the top grimace, “don’t look _too_ closely into where I’ve been, you might uncover the fact that there’s one less person walking around thanks to an antique axe and yours truly.”

“Well,” Eddie started. “I’d thank god that I had the boyfriend in the first place.”

Richie snorted. “Funny.”

“Rich, you could just—tell her,” Eddie said, getting frustrated now. “Patty knows and she hasn’t, like, divorced Stan yet.”

Richie looked up over his hands, eyes dull. The bags under them were very visible now. “Right. Because I have, or anyone else on earth has, what Stan and Patty do.”

“You’re being an asshole on purpose, and I’m going to bed.” Eddie turned to go, but Richie’s hand shot out and grabbed him by the wrist. The contact was fleeting—Richie dropped his hand before his fingers had even fully encircled Eddie’s wrist—but it stuck him in place. They looked at each other.

Richie was the first to break. “Sorry,” he said, looking down and away again. “I just—sorry. For all of it. I can’t even crash on someone’s couch without having a breakdown about it, I guess.”

“It’s okay,” Eddie said, quieter than he meant to. “I was being kind of a bitch about it.” Richie snorted.

“If I promise you I’m looking into therapists, can we let this drop? For now, at least,” Richie said.

“Am I going to have to make you take another blood oath to make sure this happens?”  
“How is your tone exactly like my mom’s when saying words she would never in one million years say,” Richie said, smiling. “But no, you won’t, Steve’s already making appointments.”

“Oh.” Eddie said. “That’s—good. That’s good, Richie.”

“Now _that’s_ something my mom would say,” Richie said, smiling, “You’re getting it, Eds.”

“You know something? Every time you say the word mom, my hackles go up,” Eddie said, smiling back. “And no, as much as that sounds like an engraved invitation, don’t even fucking think about it.”

It felt like a return to stasis, smiling at each other again, like righting a tilting ship. It broke when Richie yawned, deep enough that his jaw cracked loudly. He looked a little sheepish after.

“If you faked that to get me to leave you alone, I’m going to kill you,” Eddie said, turning away and walking down the hall towards his bedroom. “Goodnight, Rich.”

“Night, Eds.”

***

6:30 in his tiny kitchen was one of Eddie’s favorite parts of the day. Even with the light on, it was dark in a way that let you know most of the world was still sleeping. There was something about being awake for the quiet dark moments at the beginning of the day that made him feel like he was doing something more important than brewing cheap coffee. It felt a little like a sanctuary.

With Richie lying just feet away, it didn’t _not_ feel like one, but—it was different. Eddie’s island had formed a peninsula, and it snored. Not too loudly—if Eddie had been able to hear it from his room he would have smothered Richie within the hour—but just the slow, audible kind of breath that came with deep sleep.

As Eddie stared mindlessly at the back of the couch contemplating this, he heard a louder sigh and then the sound of Richie turning over in his sleep. The snoring stopped and Eddie smiled a little to himself as he turned back to his coffee. It was like Richie, to have such a presence even as he slept. Eddie was certain he barely moved in his sleep, spent the night just lying on his back. Should he try a new sleeping position? No, that was stupid, sleeping on his back aligned his spine and reduced acid reflux, there were less benefits to any other arrangement. Still, as he left the apartment as quietly as he could, he found he envied Richie’s unkempt sprawl on the air mattress a little.

***

“Out? Like, to a gay bar?” Richie said, entirely serious.

Eddie stared at him for a moment, then rubbed his hand across his face. “Richie. Why—how—are you fucking stupid?”

“I mean, generally? Yeah.”

“Why would we go out to a gay bar?” Eddie said, eyes closed.

“Uh, I don’t know, did a massive development that occurred in the last few months suddenly get, like, undeveloped?” Richie said, indignant.

“So you’re saying—no,” Eddie said, putting his hand up, “you’re saying you want to—okay, you know what? Yeah, Richie, let’s go to a gay bar, so you can watch as I fail to hit on other gay men, get hit on yourself, get papped going in and out, and have your career ruined.”

“Okay, you think you’re being dissuasive but now I just _really_ want to go to a gay bar,” Richie said, grinning.

“What part of that is a good idea?” Eddie said, increasingly ready to call the whole thing off and lock himself in his room. “You want a joint first gay bar experience that ends your career?”

“Wait, what do you mean?” Richie said. “You’ve never—?”

“No! Why would I have done that. Richie, they’d look at me and instantly cart me over to the corner full of like—sad divorcés.”

“I mean, that corner is probably horny as fuck, you could do worse.” Eddie was living a nightmare. It was nice, he supposed, that Richie was trying to support him, but it was also incredibly painful. _I can’t,_ he didn’t say. _I can’t, and you’re the reason why._

“No, dude,” Eddie said, relieved when his voice came out normal. “I don’t care how much you need material for your next special, we’re not fucking doing that.”

They ended up at a bar down the street from Eddie’s apartment, one he’d never been to before. He figured that, if this evening went badly—or if in fact it went very well—he didn’t want the memory to be attached to a place he actually went frequently.

“So,” Richie said, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. “What’s the vibe for tonight? We gonna get tipsy and chat about embarrassing things we did as kids, or do you wanna get blackout and talk about your divorce?”

“Fuck me, neither?” Eddie said. “How about we do the thing where you get incredibly philosophical about the singularity while I nod and pretend to be really into these pistachios.”

Richie laughed. “Fuck, I forgot you went to business school,” he said, his grin goofy in the low bar lighting. “The party scene must have been fucking dire.”

“Probably more cocaine than your LA hippie ones.”

“Wanna bet?”

Something about his smile made Eddie ask, “you ever—do it?”

“Yeah, dude, I have a girlfriend,” Richie said with a straight face that broke when Eddie lobbed pistachio shells at it. “No, cocaine? I mean, yeah, once or twice, in college. You?”

“You’re asking me if I’ve ever done cocaine.”

“Yeah man,” Richie said with a laugh. “You ever get down on the powder?”

“I should have known, Trashmouth,” Eddie said. “People who’ve done cocaine don’t talk like that.”

“Someone seems to be an expert on cocaine all of a sudden,” Richie said, leaning forward with his chin resting on his hand. “Very interesting.”

“I work on Wall Street,” Eddie said, trying not to look at where Richie’s mouth was stretched in a grin. “Of course I’m an expert, and fuck you if you think I’ve ever snorted anything up my fucking nose.”

“Eddie, if I didn’t know you, I might think you were coming off it right now.”

Eddie snorted. “Do you know me? It’s been, what, 6 months since we first met in person?”

“Hey, come on, I know you—I know you’re divorcing your mom-wife,” Richie said, ticking it off on his fingers. “I know you won’t drink tap water, snob, I know who you had a crush on in middle school—wait, no, I super don’t know that, actually, since it turns out Angela McKinley was a fucking lie.”

“How do you even still remember that?” Eddie said. He himself only remembered that he had picked a girl at random—lying about middle school crushes had just seemed like something you did, and it was made all the easier by the fact that nothing would ever come of it. So what if he didn’t really care about Angela, it wasn’t like she would ever have given him a second glance.

“Oh, a guy can’t remember his best friend’s fake crush?” Richie said. “Looking back on it, you did get pretty sick looking whenever somebody brought her up, but I just thought that was because it was, like, love.”

“Right, because so many fucking middle schoolers find love,” Eddie said, aware of the hypocrisy of his own statement. It felt safer, though, to hide directly in the lie. “Who was yours again?”

“Honestly, Eds,” Richie said, taking a sip of his drink. “I have no fucking idea.”

“But you remembered mine, you asshole,” Eddie said. “Very fucking convenient—what, was she embarrassing?” Richie’s answering shrug was the picture of nonchalance, which meant he was actually very anxious about something. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

“What isn’t embarrassing about wanting someone in middle school?” Richie said.

“Wanting someone?” Eddie felt his eyebrows raise. “Are we in a fucking paperback romance novel? It’s middle school, the most you can hope for is making eye contact at the school dance.”

Richie’s eyes were somewhere else. “Or holding their hand.”

The admission was way too fragile for the setting they were in, or the people they were, but Eddie stopped short of shattering it. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “That would have been nice.”

“Too bad we grew up in bumfuck, Maine, hm?” Richie said, and he was back online. “Who are you going to ask, the Paul Bunyan statue? Actually, I have to give explicit advice against that.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem—did you ever, though?”

“Yes, Richie, I had a wife,” Eddie said, just to complete the loop of the joke. “In Derry? Did I ever have, what, a boyfriend? You’ve seen what that town does to people like—me, no way. I’m barely out in New fucking York.”

“How’s that going for you?” Richie said, his eyes weirdly intense behind his glasses.

“I’m setting a timer on my watch for three minutes, that’s how long we can keep talking about my love life, past present or future,” Eddie said. “And then I’m putting the screws to your balls.”

“Well, I’ve always loved a handyman,” Richie said, tilting his head. “But I’m pretty boring—only been in love with one person in my entire life.”

Eddie felt his extremities go numb, and he drained his drink to cover it. “Poor woman,” he said to Richie’s half smile. “So, do you want to hear about Luke, or what?”

***

They didn’t quite stumble out of the bar, but it was a near thing. What felt like Richie’s entire body weight was flung over Eddie’s shoulders, but he honestly didn’t mind. In fact, when he felt Richie go to pull away, Eddie tugged on the hanging fabric of his jacket to pull him back close.

Richie laughed. “Okay, okay, bossy,” he said, but lifted his fist where it hung over Eddie’s shoulder to tap gently at Eddie’s jaw. Eddie resisted the urge to turn into it like a satisfied cat, but with the haze of alcohol, probably only succeeded in a minimal capacity.

“Stop hanging off me,” Eddie said as he clutched the jacket in his hand even closer. “I can’t tell which way my fucking house is.”

“Oh am I,” Richie tilted them both back and forth in a slightly nauseating way, “am I distracting you?” He did it again. “Sincerest apologies.”

“I’m gonna fucking kill you,” Eddie said into the collar of Richie’s shirt. It smelled nice, like the man that wore it. Some cologne, some laundry detergent, even some sweat that somehow wasn’t all that off-putting.

“Probably,” Richie said, then burped directly in Eddie’s face.  
Eddie wrinkled his nose, but remained where he was. “You haven’t grown up at all, have you?”

“Nope.” Richie’s eyes were looking directly into his, a soft smile on every part of his face. The eye contact made the moment into something of a bubble, filled only with the two of them.

It popped with a particularly close car horn, one that made Richie jump, curse, then laugh. Eddie tugged him along the sidewalk in the direction of his apartment.

When they got to the front door of the building, Eddie found that the cool night air had mostly dispelled his tipsy haze, leaving him feeling tired but content. The same could not be said for Richie, who continued to sing under his breath the same single song verse he’d been stuck on for three or four blocks as Eddie fished for his keys.

Inside the apartment, he deposited Richie on the couch and went to get water from the kitchen. Upon returning, he found Richie’s head lolled over the back of the couch, arms spread in a haphazard way. Eddie kicked at his leg until he jolted back upright.

“Hey moron,” he said, holding out the glass to Richie, who looked at it blankly. “Drink this.”

Richie groaned. “Of course you’re one of those—those preventative measures guys,” he said. “Now I’m going to have to piss even worse.”

“Don’t do it on my air mattress and we’ll be fine,” Eddie said. “And you should probably take off your shoes.” Richie looked up at him with very wide eyes and Eddie snorted. “No, dude.”

“Please?”

“I’m not touching your fucking shoes.”

“Alright, alright,” Richie said with a put upon sigh. “I guess I’ll just have to sleep in them.”

“You are the worst,” Eddie said, crouching down to untie Richie’s sneakers. He pointed up at him. “I’m doing this for the safety of my air mattress.”

“Mmhm.”

When Eddie looked back up to Richie after the long minutes of working shoelace knots apart, he half expected to see him nearly asleep again. Instead, he accidentally met Richie’s gaze head on. There was something in his eyes that made Eddie pause for a moment, a hand resting on Richie’s ankle. It wasn’t really a compromising position, but Richie’s eyes were dark from Eddie’s angle below him and with a slight shift he could be kneeling between Richie’s legs and—and what?

He shook his head and started to stand up and away when Richie grabbed his wrist and tugged him into a drunken hug.

For a moment, Eddie was stuck, frozen half inside the embrace as Richie dug his chin slightly into Eddie’s shoulder and sighed. “I miss you, you know,” Richie said, his breath skating over Eddie’s ear in a way that almost made him shiver.

With his face safely facing away over Richie’s shoulder, Eddie let his face fall into the painful expression he’d been holding back all night. “I’m right here, dude.” Tacking on the last word felt cheap, but here in Richie’s arms, it also felt necessary, a lifeboat away from the whirlpool that was the man himself.

“You should move to LA,” Richie said, tightening his hands where they’re bunched in the back of Eddie’s shirt. “There’s juice places, beaches, we could—hang out, all the time.”

Eddie huffed. There was something childlike about that, not unlike the memory of spending all day from sunup to sundown messing around with his friends when he was thirteen. “You’re really selling it, Rich.”

“So you’ll come back with me?”

“What—no,” Eddie said. “I have a job here, not to mention the pending divorce, I can’t just—leave on a jet plane.”

“Good song.”

“Yeah," Eddie said with a slight smile, "it is.”

Richie sighed again. “You could stay with me,” he said, in a very mumbly way that made Eddie think he might be in danger of falling asleep on his shoulder. “I wouldn’t mind.”

Now that was certainly a childhood fantasy, living with Richie in some sort of never ending sleepover. Eddie hadn’t quite realized as a kid that what he idly dreamt about had a name, and it was, embarrassingly, marriage, but adult Eddie sure knew what the shape of that want was. Before he had known any better, it was just about wanting Richie close, to have him to play off of, to grin at, to eat cereal while watching TV with. To have him to himself. It was still kind of about that.

“I think your girlfriend might, man,” Eddie said, finally ending the hug for his own safety with a decisive two pats to Richie’s back.

“Nah,” Richie said, and took a long sip from the glass of water Eddie had handed him. The coolness of the glass had left behind a ring of condensation on the side table. “She’s hardly ever there, anyway.”

“Right,” Eddie said. He didn’t really want to follow that conversation thread again, so instead he straightened his shirt and stood up. “Uh, I’m headed to bed, if you need to vomit, don’t.”

“Aye, aye.” Richie hit him with a halfhearted salute and Eddie retreated to his bathroom.

Staring at himself in mirror, Eddie tried his best not to think about Richie in the other room. He tried not to think about the way his arm had felt around Eddie’s shoulders, the heady feeling of Richie’s whole focus. That was a feeling that remained from all those years ago, the joy of being beheld by Richie, who would make fun of anybody, but seemed to invite Eddie into the joke most of all.

There was no one in his life who was comfortable like Richie was. Comfortable, and yet something of a live wire right down the center of who Eddie was. But wasn’t that the best part too? To be the best amalgamation of nervous and calm, to feel like the split second after a car crash, where he so fully inhibited his body he could feel every edge.

It took Eddie almost an hour of not thinking about Richie to fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey thanks for reading  
> the bit where Richie remembers who Eddie "liked" in middle school but not his own fake crush is based off real ass life where I remember what the song my best friend in middle school kissed her first boyfriend to was but like, none of my own relationships. ah to be young and gay and not aware of it  
> hope you liked it

**Author's Note:**

> everybody who made it this far: damn this bitch loves phone conversations huh (I do)
> 
> also while writing this I plugged like a couple k of it into a "who do you write like" tester and got Agatha Christe and like.......in what possible way.....
> 
> also also I didn't care to look up the actual dialogue so assume that bc Stan lived it butterfly effected everything so the lines are a little different
> 
> thanks for reading I will be back.....sometime


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